New SKA software development team forges links with UK industry

The UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has awarded additional funding to a joint academia-industry team tasked with developing prototype software for the SKA-Low telescope’s Monitor, Control and Calibration Subsystem (MCCS). The work will cover all 512 field stations, receivers and first-beamforming equipment for SKA-Low.

The funding is supporting the engagement of two software engineers from UK industry. As a result, two companies, Observatory Sciences (developers of control software for large science systems and instruments) and ITDev (suppliers of software and electronic engineering services) have each contributed an additional software engineer since June 2020.

“This has provided an excellent opportunity for the two companies to engage with the SKA project, gaining new expertise across several domains and trialling the procurement practices that will be used during construction,” says George Madden, STFC Programme Lead for the SKA. “The collective expertise of the new team will ensure the MCCS is a success.”

The team was formed in February under the Safe Agile Framework (SAFe) which the SKA Organisation has

implemented for software teams. Comprising software engineers from The University of Manchester, including Deputy Scrum Master Ralph Braddock, the STFC Daresbury Laboratory and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), the group quickly added significant development value despite being half a world apart.

Exploiting a wealth of software development expertise, the colleagues have been tasked with creating a top-to-bottom implementation of MCCS capable of interfacing with prototype hardware. Their success is built upon experience of implementing the Tango Controls Framework, a toolkit for the creation of control and monitoring software, used across the SKA Telescope Manager system.

By Hilary Kay and Mike Pearson (The University of Manchester)