Zambia has joined a consortium of seven countries in the continent's bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) main telescope hub, which will promote space science and the use of electronic engineering in Africa.
Zambia joins SA, Botswana, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Mauritius and Namibia, who fall under the SKA initiative that is training students in astronomy, engineering and information and communication technology (ICT).
The country's Ministry of Science, Technology and Vocational Training's acting permanent secretary, Albert Kayamba, says the SKA will improve access to ICTs in Zambia.
At the SKA stakeholders' sensitisation meeting in Lusaka this week, Kayamba said the potential benefit of the SKA to Zambia includes capacity building for science and technology personnel in such areas as ICT and electronic engineering.
Zambia has made a commitment to participate in the Africa SKA by supporting SA in hosting the hub, and offered land to be identified and used for the project during a Joint Permanent Commission meeting with SA last year.
“The National Remote Sensing Centre has since identified five suitable areas located in Chibombo, Chongwe, Kasempa, Mumbwa and Kafue, out of which only one location will be selected for the construction of the remote station,” said Kayamba.
Zambia has also made further commitments to facilitate the environmental impact assessment process, according to Kayamba.
The SKA is a mega-telescope that is about 100 times more sensitive than the biggest existing radio telescope. The SKA station, Kayamba said, will be a multi-functional radio telescope, which will require skilled experts in supercomputing, engineering and astronomy.
The station area will be used to accommodate different radio astronomy antennae, including a mixture of radio telescope dishes and other hybrid technologies. SKA will consist of approximately 3 000 dish-shaped antennae and other receiving technologies with a core of about 2 000 antennae and outlaying stations of 30 to 40 antennae each spiralling out of the core. The station will be spread over a vast area of up to 3 000km.
Research areas will include observational radio astronomy, digital signal processing radio astronomy instruments, distributed data processing and RF broadband feeds, receivers and cryogenic packages.
The announcement of a successful bidder will be made in 2012, while construction of the SKA is scheduled to start around 2016.
Hosting of the SKA in SA is expected to boost the development of high-level skills and cutting-edge technology infrastructure in Africa, and would also attract expertise and collaborative projects to the continent.
Share
