Construction of the world’s largest radio telescope to begin on Thursday

In a major milestone, July 1 will mark the commencement of the construction of the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO), the proposed largest radio telescope in the world.

The announcement was made on Tuesday by Prof Philip Diamond, director general, SKAO.

Once fully operational by 2029, the SKAO — to be built across South Africa and Australia — will generate astronomical data measuring 700 Petabytes, annually.

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, the SKAO will be an array of 197 dishes located in South Africa and 1,31,072 antennas in western Australia and operate in the 50 MegaHertz-15.3 GigaHertz frequency range.