India Joins Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Organization To Build World's Largest Telescope

The Indian Government has obtained a formal membership of the Square Kilometer Array Organization (SKA Radio Telescope). The SKA Organisation is an intergovernmental body that will build, manage and run the world's largest telescope. The SKA radio telescope will have a total signal collecting area of about 1 sq.km and it will be built in Australia and South Africa. Once functional, it will cover a wide spectrum of frequencies; making it over 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument on the Earth. India has been involved in the SKA project for years through contribution to the design.

Dr. R.K. Sinha, the secretary of India's Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) signed the documents on behalf of Government of India at a ceremony organised in Mumbai on October 5th. Director General of the SKA Project, Prof. Phillip Diamond was present at the ceremony along with the dignitaries from SKA (UK) and scientists and officials from DAE, DST and various research organisations from all over India.

National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR), Pune will be the nodal institute that will oversee all the SKA related activities in India. NCRA joined the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) - The Biggest Telescope Ever Organisation as an associate member in April 2012 and became a full member in August 2014. NCRA has been involved with the SKA project since its earliest days. It had signed agreement back in 1997 to develop technologies for the large-scale telescope project.


Dr. Diamond said that NCRA has already been paying a significant role in the design of the telescope which will continue till 2017. The construction of the telescope is expected to begin in 2018. Dr. Diamond further said that India has decades of expertise in the low frequency radio astronomy domain which will be an added advantage.

With this step, India joins the club of nine other countries, viz. Australia, Canada, China, Italy, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, The Netherlands and UK. Germany was one of the member of the group but decided to leave the SKA project this year.

SKA is an interesting science project. It's being designed to survey the sky 10,000 times faster than ever before and generate Exabyte -> Zettabyte -> Yottabyte -> Brontobyte -> Gegobyte Of Data Storage of information every day. Scientists are hopeful that it will help find out the IBM To Power MWA Telescope - Will They Discover Origins Of The Universe?. The official website (linked below) says that the SKA will be so sensitive that it will be able to detect an airport radar on a planet that is tens of light years away! It will need total computing power of about 100 million personal computers. Do check out other such interesting facts about SKA in the second link below.

Source: Indian Government joins SKA Organisation - Public Website
SKA Facts: #-Link-Snipped-#