Installation of 130,000 International Radio Interferometer Telescopes in Australia, South Africa, and More
"Korea's Participation in SKAO Marks the Beginning of a New Space Era"
One of the projects that the Korea Aerospace Agency is focusing on this year is participating in the "Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) project."
SKAO is a mega project to install the largest SKA telescope in human history to illuminate the process of the universe's creation by observing low and mid-frequency electromagnetic waves emitted from space.
Christmas tree-shaped SKA-Low prototype antenna installed in the Murchison Desert area of Australia. Provided by the Australian Department of Industry, Science and Resources (DISR)
SKAO will construct numerous telescopes divided into "mid-frequency" and "low-frequency" bands to achieve a total collecting area of 1 km², and the data will be integrated and analyzed by a high-performance supercomputer at the global headquarters in the United Kingdom.
The "SKA-low," responsible for the low frequency range of 50?350 MHz, will be installed in the Murchison Desert, Western Australia, with a maximum distance of 65 km between base stations. It will consist of 131,072 small antennas (radio telescopes) resembling Christmas trees, distributed across 512 base stations.
The "SKA-mid," responsible for the mid-frequency range of 350 MHz to 15.4 GHz, will be constructed in the Karoo region of South Africa, with a maximum antenna distance of 150 km, comprising 197 dish-shaped antennas (large radio telescopes).
Once all facilities are completed, SKAO will become a radio telescope boasting overwhelming performance in resolution, speed, and sensitivity compared to the best existing facilities.
The total scale of the SKAO project is 1.986 billion euros (approximately 2.9989 trillion KRW), with construction having started in 2022 and aiming for completion in 2030. Partial observations will begin in 2026, and observations are planned to continue for over 50 years.
Fourteen countries, including the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, the Netherlands, China, and Italy, have signed the "SKAO Treaty" and participate as member states. Given the enormous project costs, SKAO expects Korea to join as a full member. Currently, Korea holds observer status along with France and is pursuing treaty accession to become an SKAO member.
The Korea Aerospace Agency will invest a total budget of 44.7 billion KRW over seven years from this year until 2031 to cooperate on the SKAO project and will receive priority access to observation data as a full member.
Kang Hyun-woo, Program Manager of the Space Science Exploration Division at the Korea Aerospace Agency, said, "SKAO will be a world-class telescope not only in observation facilities but also in research," adding, "Korea's participation in the SKAO project is expected to induce profit generation for domestic companies and serve as the start of a new space era that satisfies the intellectual aspirations of the public through expanded knowledge value creation."
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