In remote Western Australia, around 800km north of Perth on the ancestral lands of the Wajarri Yamaji people, thousands of ‘pine-like’ antennas are emerging from the dry landscape. At the same time, some 10,000km away in the barren Karoo region of South Africa, white mushroom-like dishes are being installed in their hundreds.
Thousands of astronomers and engineers have spent 30 years conceiving and designing the single telescope that will encompass these two distant regions, the dishes and antennas combining to make up the SKA (Square Kilometre Array) telescope, the construction of which was finally given the go-ahead in 2021. The SKA will be the biggest radio telescope in history, and it should provide us with the answers to some of the universe’s biggest mysteries.
“Mankind will take another giant leap by undertaking to build what will become the biggest scientific structure of its kind on the planet,” says Professor Philip Diamond, the Director-General of SKAO, the organisation
