1. AAS – TWAS – NCST
The Square Kilometre Array Radio
Telescope
Nairobi 27 May 2013
2. Africa–next great economic growth story
• Rapid growth - value added industries, not
only resource extraction
• WEF - huge infrastructure programme
planned
– Greatest constraint is scientific, engineering,
ICT, commercial etc. skills and capacity to
plan, design, build, operate and maintain
• Skills and competency for competitiveness
• ICT underpins everything
3. Africa and Big Science
• Building the world’s largest science
infrastructure in Africa – the Square Kilometre
Array Radio Telescope
• A breakthrough for Africa in how we perceive
ourselves and how others perceive us
• African scientists to do big science and
fundamental science and high-tech – Nobel
Prizes from Africa, by Africans
• Exciting projects to attract young people into
science and technology and keep them in Africa
7. SKA Dishes
Dishes to cover the frequency range 500 MHz to 10 GHz
Phase 1: 250 Dishes (do science early), 200km baselines
Phase 2: +-3000 Dishes, up to 3000km baselines
8. SKA Dense Aperture Arrays
Array of "tiles" to cover the medium frequency range from 200 to 500 MHz
3 x 3 m tiles will be grouped into circular stations, 60 m in diameter
9. SKA Dense Aperture Arrays
Array of "tiles" to cover the medium frequency range from 200 to 500 MHz
3 x 3 m tiles will be grouped into circular stations, 60 m in diameter
10. SKA Sparse Aperture Arrays
Array of simple dipole antennas to cover frequency range from 70 – 200 MHz
Grouped in 100m diameter stations each containing about 90 elements
11. SKA Cost
• Acquisition cost (capex and NRE)
– I expect about €4 billion – decision on Phase
1 cap in July
• Operations and maintenance over ~50
years
– Probably €~3-400 million per year
• Costs to be covered by members of the
SKA Organisation
• Other contributions possible – EU?
12. SKA Organisation
• Ten countries – UK, Canada, Germany,
Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, China, South
Africa, Australia, New Zealand
• India joining
• Four intend to join – Japan, South Korea,
France, USA
• USA probably after 2020 (Decadal Review
of Astronomy)
• Membership currently €250 000 per year
13. SKA site decision timeline
• Discussions started early 1990s
• Expressions of interest 2003
• Proposals December 2005
• Short list September 2006
• Site testing and planning
• Submit proposals (we sent 27000 pages
of supporting documents) September
2011
• Recommendation for Africa February
2012
14. Proposed SKA construction timeline
• 2013 – 2016 Pre-construction, detailed design
• 2014 – 2016 Members seek SKA1 funding, following
establishment of cost-cap (July 2013) and confirmation of
SKA1 scope.
• 2016/17 Establishment of new governance
arrangements for the SKA Organisation
• 2017 Tender for and procure construction of SKA1
• 2017 – 2020 Detailed design of SKA2
• 2018 – 2021 Construction of SKA1
• 2020 Early science with some components of SKA1
• 2019 – 2021 Seek SKA2 construction funding
• 2022 – 2027 Construction of SKA2
15. Why the SKA?
• Multi-wavelength astronomy
• Science case
– Galaxy evolution, cosmology and dark energy
– Strong field tests of general relativity using pulsars
and black holes
– Origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism
– Probing the Dark Ages –how were the first stars and
black holes formed?
– Detect very weak extra-terrestrial signals and will
search for complex molecules, the building blocks of
life, in space
• And serendipitous discoveries!
22. What is expected from partners?
• Next working group meeting July 2013 –
Ministers will visit the site
– Institutional, technical and scientific capacity
– Availability of sites
– Testing and characterisation of the sites
– Protection from radio frequency interference through
regulation
– Easy access for work and research for SKAO people
and goods (diplomatic status?)
– No customs, excise duties, VAT
– Participate in planning and delivery in country
27. The SKA is an Opportunity
• What we make of it depends on what we put into
it – nothing is given to us on a plate
– Science – Nobel Prizes for Africa?
– Human capital development and skills - critical mass
of young engineers and scientists with expertise in
next-generation technologies (e.g. Big Data; digital
signal processing; HPC; control etc.) and science
– Reverse brain drain
– Strengthen universities
– Stimulating interest in science and engineering
– Jobs in construction, operations and maintenance
– Industry involvement
– Spin-offs
28. Example - Big Data
• Technologies for SKA are innovative
• Big Data creating entirely new industries which will
be very dominant in the global economy – millions
or billions of sensors sending streams of data;
huge data sets requiring ultra-fast computing,
analysis and visualisation, storage.
• SKA >100 x the data traffic of the world-wide web.
– An exabyte of data per day – 1018
bytes
– Exaflop computing speeds – current best is some
petaflops. Equivalent would be ~ 108
laptops
• Use SKA to get young people into Big Data,
wireless, signal processing etc. so that Africa can
play a world-leading role in these new industries.
29. AERAP
• European Parliament Written Declaration
to support Radio Astronomy in Africa
• They have established the Africa-Europe
Radio Astronomy Platform to mobilize
funding and collaboration
• Working with the European Parliament
and Commission and with European and
African astronomers on projects
• Possible major new funding instruments
30. Collaboration
• Mutual benefit agreements
– DOME – IBM Europe, ASTRON (Netherlands), SKA
SA: various aspects of high performance computing
– SKA SA and IBM USA – machine learning
– Intel and SKA SA: pushing next generation chips
– Nokia Siemens and SKA: data transport
– CISCO and NMMU
• CASPER collaboration
• Huawei
• Many universities and institutes
31. Why Precursors?
• Develop and test designs and
technologies
• Understand costs
• Develop science
• Get involved with SA universities to do
MeerKAT science
32. Protected Karoo Site
• 14 000 ha bought
• Protected by Astronomy Geographic
Advantage Act
• Access roads, 33kV specially designed
powerline (no sparking), 10Gb/s optical
fibre, buildings etc. built for Kat 7
• Roads, airstrip, buildings, sub-station
upgrade for MeerKAT
33. SKA Site and the Central Astronomy
Advantage Area
34. Astronomy Geographical Advantage Act
• Empowers the Minister for Science and
Technology to declare protected areas
around strategic astronomy sites by
regulation
• Covers both radio and optical astronomy
• The Act establishes an AGA Management
Authority to regulate and enforce
• Three tiers of protected areas:
• Core area – the physical area of the
observatory / instrument
• Central area – surrounds the core area.
Minister prohibits certain activities /
categories of activities in this area
• Coordination area –Minister sets standards
which activities must comply with
• Protected areas apply to existing and new
activities
• The Act prevails over existing Electronic
Communications Act, where protection of
radio astronomy is concerned
52. 30-m class antennas in Africa
Contributes to
excellent
science with
European and
other VLBI
networks.
Very exciting
science -
looking at
physics very
close to black
holes.
55. Capacity development
• Use AVN project to build up institutional,
technical, science capacity
• Develop research and teaching in
astronomy and physics – exchange
programmes etc.
• Major technical training
• Interns
• Build HPC skills to become involved in
data processing and science
56. Human Capital Development
• Research chairs
• Visiting / joint professorships
• University grants – support or lecturers
• Postdoctoral fellowships
• Postgraduate bursaries
• Undergraduate bursaries
• Internships
• Technician training – national diplomas
at universities of technology
• FET (artisan) training (from Carnarvon)
– 9 taken in 2010, 8 employed at SKA SA
– Successful initiative
– 15 taken in for 2012
• Development of astrophysics and
related engineering in Africa partner
states
• Mobility grants
A focused and structured
programme with a pipeline
strategy
57. Africa HCD workshop at KAT 7 site (May 2011)
Lots of enthusiasm to work with African
58.
59.
60. Astrophysics in Nairobi
• CONGRATULATIONS TO UNIVERSITY
OF NAIROBI ON FIRST 18 GRADUATES
IN ASTROPHYSICS
• A DIRECT RESULT OF SKA!
• STAY IN THE FIELD – DO HIGHER
DEGREES
66. Obinna Umeh - Nigeria
• An SKA PhD student supervised by (Clark) and George
Ellis, has been an exceptional achiever. Obinna Umeh is
about to graduate, having recently been awarded his PhD.
An examiner from Oxford thought it a ”remarkable piece of
work” and one of the ”most impressive theses I have read”.
He has published 5 papers already, with two awaiting
acceptance, including an invited Key Issues Review for
Reports on Progress in Physics, a review journal with the
highest impact factor in Physics. With an international
collaborator, he has co-written a major new code for
analytically calculating the Einstein equations to high
accuracy. His work is high-impact: he has nearly 100
citations already.
67
73. The three signatures of an advanced
country are technology, science &
culture. Astronomy needs &
enables them all – George Miley
www.ska.ac.za
Editor's Notes
Development of the first two prototype CASPER/ROACH boards. Designed by MeerKAT DSP team in cooperation with UCB, laid out at NRAO, being debugged at MeerKAT office. Looks good so far.
