Seeing is believing: site visits bring SKA-Mid telescope to life

BY CASSANDRA CAVALLARO (SKAO)

Only a short flight (or 700-km drive) from Cape Town, the SKA-Mid telescope is taking shape. Its first dish, towering 20 m tall, was assembled exactly a month before the start of the IAU General Assembly, surrounded by the densely populated core area of the MeerKAT telescope array.

That was the breathtaking view that awaited more than 130 visitors who were welcomed to the SKA-Mid and MeerKAT site during the two weeks of the IAU General Assembly. General Assembly delegates, diplomats, policy makers, journalists and staff from the SKAO and several partner organisations made the journey.

In-person visits are logistically challenging – the site is not open to the public and access is strictly controlled owing to on-going construction and to limit interference with MeerKAT operations – but for the SKAO and SARAO this was an opportunity to demonstrate what is often talked about: the progress and wider benefits of the SKA project.

“Site visits are an extremely powerful way of reinforcing that both MeerKAT and the SKA telescopes are impactdriven projects, and for key people to take that message home with them,” said Dr Lindsay Magnus, SKA-Mid Telescope Director.

“Both MeerKAT and the SKA telescopes are seeking to deliver next-generation technologies and facilities to enable science but also socio-economic development across participating countries.”

The visits started in the Karoo Array Processing Building at Losberg, the power and data hub for the site, before it was time to get up close to the telescopes.

First-time visitors were awestruck, with one journalist declaring: “I used to like the SKA, now I love it!”

Dr Khotso Mokhele, former President and CEO of the South African National Research Foundation and the Academy of Science of South Africa, attended one of the VIP visits. He reminded the guests of the long journey South Africa has been on since the end of the apartheid era, and the country’s achievements in science, and more specifically in astronomy, with the construction of the South African Large Telescope, then MeerKAT, and now the participation in the SKAO and the hosting of its SKA-Mid telescope.

“We decided to be a full member of the nations in the world. We wanted to give children in this country the ability to believe that it is possible,” he said.

“Some of us hope with a project like this and the success of what has been achieved here, we will keep that spirit, keep the flame burning in this country that my goodness, we can do whatever we set our minds to do.”