This document summarizes information about the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope project, including: 1) SKA is an international effort to build the world's largest radio telescope, with Phase 1 construction from 2018-2024 across sites in Australia and South Africa. 2) SKA will consist of thousands of antennas and dishes to study topics like the first stars/galaxies, galaxy evolution, and more. 3) Managing and analyzing the enormous amounts of data produced by SKA poses big data challenges that African countries are working to address through initiatives like the African VLBI Network and a proposed African Data Intensive Research Cloud.

1. DATA SHARING IN AFRICA
SQUARE KILOMETRE ARRAY TELESCOPE
International Workshop on Environmental and Scientific Open Data for Sustainable Development Goals in Developing Countries
Antananarivo, Madagascar, September 2017
Anita Loots
Pr.Eng.

2. www.ska.ac.za
The SKA Project
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) mega-project is an international
effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope

3. www.ska.ac.za
SKA Bid
Outcome announced 25 May 2012
• Originally SKA South Africa was administered directly by the
Department of Science and Technology (DST) in South Africa;
• In 2005 the National Research Foundation was requested by DST to
take over the administration of SKA South Africa;
• SKA SA and Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory is
currently merging into one national facility.

4. www.ska.ac.za
SKA1-LOW: 50 – 350 MHz
Phase 1: ~130,000 antennas
across 65km
SKA1-Mid: 350 MHz – 24 GHz
Phase 1: 200 15-m dishes across 150 km
SKA1: HQ in UK; telescopes in AUS & RSA
Construction: 2018 – 2024; Cost cap: €675M

5. 3 sites; 2 telescopes + HQ
= 1 Observatory
Design Phase: > €170M; 600 scientists + engineers
Phase 1
Construction: 2018 – 2024
Construction cost cap: €675M (inflation-adjusted)
Operations cost: under development (see below)
MeerKat integrated
Observatory Development Programme (€20M/year planned)
SKA Regional centres out of scope of centrally-funded SKAO.
Phase 2: start mid-2020s
~2000 dishes across 3500km in Africa
Major expansion of SKA1-Low across Western Australia
Square Kilometre Array Phase 1 in a nutshell

6. www.ska.ac.za
SKA Global organisation
• Australia (DoI&S)
• Canada (NRC-HIA)
• China (MOST)
• India (DAE)
• Italy (INAF)
• Netherlands
(NWO)
• New Zealand
(MED)
• South Africa (DST)
• Sweden
(Chalmers)
• UK (STFC)
Interested
Countries:
• France
• Germany
• Japan
• Korea
• Malta
• Portugal
• Spain
• Switzerland
• USA
Contacts:
• Mexico
• Brazil
• Ireland
• Russia

7. www.ska.ac.za
The SKA Science

8. www.ska.ac.za
Cosmic Dawn
(First Stars and Galaxies)
Galaxy Evolution
(Normal Galaxies z~2-3)
Cosmology
(Dark Energy, Large Scale Structure)
Cosmic Magnetism
(Origin, Evolution)
Cradle of Life
(Planets, Molecules, SETI)
Testing General Relativity
(Strong Regime, Gravitational Waves)
Exploration of the Unknown
Extremely broad range of science!
SKA Science Drivers – the history of the
universe

9. www.ska.ac.za
SKA Big Data challenge
Kilo
Mega
Giga
Tera
Peta
Exa
Zetta

10. www.ska.ac.za
SKA precursors

11. www.ska.ac.za
African VLBI Network of Telescopes in Africa - ensuring readiness for SKA2
The AVN project
Phase 1: Ghana Phase 3: Kenya
Phase 3: Mauritius
Phase 2: Botswana
Phase 2: Namibia
Phase 3: Madagascar
or Zambia
Phase 3: Mozambique
Phase 2: Zambia or
Madagascar

12. www.ska.ac.za
● Until 31 March 2017 the SKA SA programme was structured around
specific projects with project teams defined and recruited on the
basis of the needs of the specific engineering projects and
interventions;
● With the SKA SA & HartRAO merger, the newly formed entity will
become an National Research Foundation facility and will be re-
structured in order to maximise efficient use of resources;
● Current engineering projects and initiatives within SKA SA include:
• The global SKA telescope project;
• The MeerKAT telescope project;
• The African Very Long Baseline interferometry network of telescopes
(AVN) project(s);
• The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation (HERA) telescope project;
• Big Data initiatives;
• Infrastructure for MeerKAT, SKA and other telescope or geodesy projects.
A South African Radio Astronomy Observatory
SKA in South Africa (SKA SA)

13. www.ska.ac.za
Science Data Archive
SKA Data flow schematic
Switch
SKA1-LOW
SKA1-MID
Switch
100 PFLOPS
130 - 300 PB/yr
Users
Beam former / Correlator Science Data Processor
~8 Tbps
~5 Tbps
~2 Pbps
Beam former / Correlator Science Data ProcessorSwitchSwitch
~5 Tbps
AFRICA
AUSTRALIA
SKA Regional Science Centres

14. www.ska.ac.za
SKA1 Scope
Service Level Agreements
Memorandum of Understanding
In Scope

15. www.ska.ac.za
SKA1Regional Centres
Outside SKAO scope
RSA
AUS
• Required
• capacity for reprocessing data and their
analysis
• storage for a long-term archive
• local user support
• Intent
• SKA partner countries planning SKA
regional Centres
• National super-computing centres
• Provide local support to scientists
• Development of new techniques, new
algorithms
• Deliver SKA science
Sunway TaihuLight – 93 PFlops

16. www.ska.ac.za
SKA Big Data focus areas

17. www.ska.ac.za
● MeerKAT Science Data Processor will complete the implementation of the
largest data storage system of its kind, hosted at the Centre of High
Performance Computing (CHPC);
● The storage system is geared for next-generation large survey telescopes
such as MeerKAT and the SKA;
● The component has applicability in industry, with low costs, while offering
high performance and capacity;
● The key component in the storage system was co-developed locally as part
of our beneficiation of the South African High Tech industry.
Big Data - MeerKAT

18. www.ska.ac.za
• SKA is not an “Open Skies” telescope;
• MeerKAT is an “Open Skies” telescope:
• Anyone from around the world can propose to use it – formation of “Large Survey Project Teams (LSPs)”;
• LSPs use approx 2/3 of telescope time for 5 years (from 2018);
• Periodic calls for “Open Time” proposals for remainder of time (from 2018) – open to anyone in the world.
• MeerKAT users will need to be very experienced as individuals to handle complex
data sets OR join the MeerKAT Large Survey Project Teams who – collectively – will
have the skills.
• MeerKAT Data Policy (still tbd) will outline a proprietary period during which Principal
Investigators of LSPs will have access to the date, before being released to the
broader science community.
• It will be very difficult to handle the enormous data sets and the community would
have to develop the skills to handle the volumes of data, store and analyse it in order
to do science with it.
SKA and MeerKAT Data Policies

19. www.ska.ac.za
• For each country’s national science programme (ie Single dish
telescope)
• Each country decide for itself – recommendation is for “Open Skies”;
• As part of the African Network of telescopes
• Data Policy to be developed by all African partners but we will support an
Open Skies policy;
• As part of the European or other networks of telescopes:
• Data of all telescopes participating in observations available to all;
• The AVN project, in collaboration with the Centre for High
Performance Computing, aims to teach the skills to access and use
the data to do science.
African VLBI Network of Telescopes
Data Policies

20. www.ska.ac.za
Big Data - vision
Towards an African Data Intensive Research Cloud (ADIRC)
●A CLOUD-based ”Big Data” solution for Africa is currently
being conceptualised for the longer term to enable African
partners to participate in the research activities of the SKA and
broader applications to help achieve the Sustainability
Development Goals and Africa 2063 vision.
●Centre for High Performance (CHPC) training intervention is a
crucial enabler to realise an African Research Cloud Computing
platform.

21. SKA South Africa, a Business Unit of the National Research Foundation.
We are building the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope (SKA), ultimately located in nine African countries, with
part in Australia. The SKA will be the largest radio telescope ever built and will produce science that changes our
understanding of the universe.
The African VLBI Network of Telescopes is a pre-cursor to the SKA Phase 2 stations on the continent and will ensure
SKA Readiness in all partner countries.
Contact information
Anita Loots Pr.Eng.
Email: aloots@ska.ac.za
www.ska.ac.za