Square Kilometre Array

The Square Kilometre Array is a large multi radio telescope project aimed to be built in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. If built, it would have a total collecting area of approximately one square kilometre. It would operate over a wide range of frequencies and its size will make it 50 times more sensitive than any other radio instrument. It would require very high performance central, computing engines and long-haul links with a capacity greater than the global Internet traffic as of 2013. It should be able to survey the sky more than ten thousand times faster than ever before.With receiving stations extending out to distance of at least 3,000 kilometres from a concentrated central core, it would exploit radio astronomy's ability to provide the highest resolution images in all astronomy. The SKA would be built in the southern hemisphere, in sub-Saharan states with cores in South Africa and Australia, where the view of the Milky Way Galaxy is best and radio interference least.Construction of the SKA is scheduled to begin in 2018 for initial observations by 2020, but the construction budget is not secured at this stage. The SKA would be built in two phases, with Phase 1 representing about 10% of the capability of the whole telescope. Phase 1 of the SKA was cost-capped at 650 million euros in 2013, while Phase 2's cost has not yet been established. The headquarters of the project are located at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, in the UK.