Super 'scope work to begin

Australian research organisations are at the head of work to build thousands of dishes and millions of radio wave receptors, linked by high-bandwidth optical fibre.

The CSIRO will play a lead role in the next stage of the development of the world’s largest radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), to be located in Australia and in Africa. This follows the SKA Organisation (SKAO) announcement that it has allocated R&D ‘work packages’ to consortia from around the world. The consortia, involving science institutes and industry, will progress the design and validation processes of the SKA to a stage that will enable tendering and build of the telescope from 2017.

CSIRO will head up the largest of these consortia, the SKA Dish Array Consortium, and will be responsible for the design work relating to the SKA’s 2500 antenna dishes and receivers, and the development of innovative receivers known as phased array feeds (or PAFs).

In addition, CSIRO will lead the Infrastructure Australia Consortium in charge of designing and costing critical SKA infrastructure at the Australian SKA site (the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia). This would include the provision of power, communications, buildings, water and access to the site.

Artist’s impression of dishes that will make up the SKA radio telescope at the Australian core site. Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/Australian SKA Office.

The SKA will be a revolutionary radio telescope made of thousands of dishes and literally millions of radio wave receptors, or antennas, linked together by high-bandwidth optical fibre. The telescope will be co-located in Australia and in Africa. Construction of the first phase of the SKA will begin in 2018, with work on a second phase planned to begin in the early 2020s.

“The SKA is an international project, with global scale and huge scientific ambition,” chief of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science Dr Lewis Ball said.

“CSIRO’s considerable expertise in the field of radioastronomy means we can make a real contribution to one of this century’s most exciting scientific projects.”

Thousands of times faster

Dr Ball also highlighted the benefits of CSIRO’s innovative PAF technology which is currently being developed for use with its Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, as well as for use with the future SKA.

“PAFs give astronomers the opportunity to view a large part of the sky all at once and can transform sky survey speeds by more than a factor of 20 when compared to traditional receiver technologies,” he said.

“This groundbreaking technology will truly revolutionise the field of radioastronomy.”

CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope with its innovative phased array receiver technology. Credit: Dragonfly Media.

CSIRO will also be a key partner in the Assembly Integration and Verification Consortium, which includes the integration of CSIRO’s ASKAP and the South African MeerKAT precursor telescopes into Phase 1 of the SKA telescope rollout.

As well, the organisation will be involved in several other SKA consortia, including those designing the telescope control system and the telescope’s signal processing and data transport functions. It will receive $9 million in funding from the Australian Federal Government in support of its SKA R&D activity.

When complete, it is expected that the SKA telescope will be able to operate thousands of times faster than the best present-day instruments. It will allow research into giant gas clouds, black holes, magnetic fields, as well as distant galaxies, and will address a wide range of fundamental questions in physics, astrophysics, cosmology and astrobiology.

Work to begin in Western Australia

Preconstruction work for 11 different aspects of the SKA has been valued together at $170 million. Australian industry and research institutes will participate in seven of the 11 work packages, with the Perth-based International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) directly involved in three.

ICRAR will collaborate with international colleagues in science and industry to help design the SKA’s Science Data Processor, as well as the Central Signal Processor and the Low Frequency Aperture Array for the part of the SKA that will be located entirely in Australia, SKA-low.

The Science Data Processor is the part of the SKA’s powerful computing, storage and network system that will process the terabytes of data per second produced by the SKA’s antennas into information ready for the world’s astronomers to use.

The Central Signal Processor is another, more specialised, computing system within the SKA that is used to combine the signals from the millions of SKA-low antennas into the format needed for the Science Data Processor.

Working with international colleagues, ICRAR will also be involved in the design and testing of the Christmas tree-like antennas that make up the most visible part of SKA-low.

Artist’s impression of the low-frequency portion of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA-low) which will be constructed in Australia. In the latter part of this decade, 250,000 of these person-height antennas will be built in Western Australia and observe the Universe at radio wavelengths. Credit: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ICRAR/U. Cambridge/ASTRON.

Engineers from ICRAR’s Curtin University node will draw on their extensive experience with the construction and operation of the Curtin-led Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), the SKA-low precursor telescope located near the Australian SKA site.

As well as leading the task of verifying SKA-low’s key electronic systems, ICRAR leads the specialised infrastructure work for SKA-low, such as solar power, signal transport and custom building design, and is collaborating with local and international industry to roll out cost-effective solutions on the remote WA site.

Work on the site has already begun; a first stage test array of new-generation low-frequency antennas is co-located with the MWA in the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory. The test array has already produced images, and extensive measurements are underway to help finalise SKA antenna and systems designs.

“Curtin University staff will bring their unique experience with the Murchison Widefield Array and aperture array verification systems to their work on the Square Kilometre Array,” said Acting Curtin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Colin Stirling. “The Curtin team are internationally recognised for their expertise in end-to-end systems for radioastronomy, from antennas through to images.”

Big data for a big telescope

Experts from ICRAR’s ICT team at The University of Western Australia node will also draw on their experience with the MWA for their contribution to the SKA’s Science Data Processor.

Having designed and implemented the MWA’s data archiving system, the UWA-based team will base the SKA’s systems on their experience with the MWA and another major international telescope project, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) in northern Chile.

UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson said that global players in the ICT world would work with UWA’s top scientists to help build the world-class telescope. “The Square Kilometre Array will produce more data than anything else on the planet, and UWA is playing a leading role in this fast-growing area of science - ‘big data’,” Professor Johnson said.

ICRAR’s work on the SKA Science Data Processor will build on existing industry relationships and collaborations with Australian organisations such as iVEC, which manages the Pawsey Centre for Supercomputing where the MWA’s data archive is based.

ICRAR is also managing an international collaboration working on the SKA Central Signal Processor for SKA-low. Staff at the Curtin University node will work with industry partners, including CISCO and NVIDIA, to develop software to combine signals from the millions of SKA-low antennas - software that will run on a specialised computer so powerful that it will be in the top 10 on the planet next decade.

In September, ICRAR was extended until 2019 with a $26 million grant from the Government of Western Australia. Earlier this year, ICRAR was also successful in receiving almost $4 million for the Low Frequency Aperture Array and almost $1m for the Central Signal Processor preconstruction work, both as part of a $19 million SKA funding package from the Australian federal government.