Submarine cable company Seacom is the latest entity to support SA's bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope.
The SKA is a mega-telescope that is about 100 times more sensitive than the biggest existing radio telescope. SA is bidding against Australia to host it.
A memorandum of understanding (MOU) has been signed between the SKA SA project and Seacom, says site bid manager at the SKA SA office Bruce Wallace.
He adds that the SKA is a mega-science project, and will require the upgrade of infrastructure for science and research. The benefits of the upgraded technology and infrastructure will be felt not only by scientists, but by African businesses and economies, he explains.
“To put the SKA data transport capacity requirements into perspective, the SKA network is estimated to be 100 to 150 times larger than the current World Wide Web network.”
Therefore, head of product strategy at Seacom Suveer Ramdhani says no one private sector partner can on its own address the needs of projects like SKA and so partnerships are essential.
The SKA SA project recently signed an MOU with technology company Intel, and SKA project manager Bernie Fanaroff says there are a few more partnerships in the pipeline.
World first
Seacom yesterday announced that, in partnership with American digital optical networking equipment supplier Infinera, it achieved a global first by successfully trialling five 100Gbps channels of coherent optical transmission over a distance of 1 732km.
Wallace says this 100Gbps network project is a landmark achievement for both SA and Africa, and signals to the international science research and development community that global projects such as the SKA are well within Africa's reach.
“We are proud of SA's ability to deliver world-class, complex and hi-tech projects on time. The timing of this important telecommunications milestone couldn't be better; it comes in time for inclusion in the SKA site bid submission reports due by the middle of September.”
Revolutionising science
The SKA will consist of approximately 3 000 dish-shaped antennae and other hybrid receiving technologies, with a core of about 2 000 antennae and outlying stations of 30 to 40 antennae each, spiralling out of the core. These stations will be spread over a vast area of up to 3 000km.
Research areas will include observational radio astronomy, radio astronomy instrumentation, digital signal processing, distributed data processing and RF broadband feeds, receivers and cryogenic packages.
Wallace says the SKA promises to revolutionise science by answering some of the most fundamental questions that remain about the origin, nature and evolution of the universe.
“With global investment supporting the project, and astronomers and engineers around the world already working on its design, construction on the SKA is scheduled to start around 2016.”
The announcement of the successful bidder will be made in 2012.
Share