SKA Observatory: World's largest radio telescope in WA’s north to bring $1.8b in foreign income to Australia

A big project in the biggest State will help people all over the world answer the big questions about the universe. And Science Minister Ed Husic hopes the Square Kilometre Array will lead to budding Australian space scientists realising big dreams. Construction started on the world’s largest radio telescope on Monday, with Mr Husic officiating at a ground-breaking ceremony on Wajarri Yamaji Country near Murchison, 800 kilometres north of Perth. The Minister also announced Australian business Ventia has won $200 million in contracts for infrastructure projects related to the site, including installing power and fibre networks and constructing buildings to house data-processing equipment. The SKA Observatory will consist of 131,072 antennas that look like two-metre-tall metal Christmas trees. Researcher Danny Price from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, a joint partnership between Curtin University and the University of Western Australia, said the scale of the project is such that it would be able to detect a mobile phone in the pocket of an astronaut on Mars. “The tremendous sensitivity of the SKA will allow astronomers to peer back billions of years to ‘cosmic dawn’ — the epoch when the first stars in the universe were forming,” Dr Price said. “From searching for extraterrestrial intelligence to detecting signals from cosmic dawn, there are so many exciting science questions the SKA will answer. We are going to need more astronomers, engineers, and data scientists!” The facility is a collaboration between 16 countries and will have a sister telescope site in South Africa. It has been in the works for more than a decade. Mr Husic said the work and research the SKA would attract should bring about $1.8 billion in foreign income to Australia over the next three decades. “Australia’s membership of the SKA Observatory is not only good for industry today but will inspire generations of Australians to dream big and follow a career in STEM,” he said. Deputy Premier Roger Cook, the State’s Science Minister, said the global impact of the work would also create jobs at home for engineers, scientists and technicians. “Data collected in Western Australia will expand our very understanding of the universe and drive technological developments across the globe,” he said.