Thirty years after the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope was proposed and a decade after WA was chosen to host the project, work is starting on the final stage of one of humanity’s greatest-ever scientific endeavours.
Some of the world’s most accomplished scientists are in Perth for an imminent sod-turning in the Murchison, an area chosen for its whisper quietness.
The construction of 130,000 low-frequency radio antennas — structures that resemble Christmas trees made out of coat hangers — is the final part of the sprawling project.
Interpreting low-frequency radio signatures is the holy grail of astronomy because these waves can easily pass through the clouds of dust and gas that have frustrated astronomers for centuries.
The success of traditional dish antennas, which detect high-frequency radio waves, is determined by their size. Even the biggest dishes can collect just a fraction of what a small array of radio antennas can.
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The SKA’s collection area of one million square metres will interpret radio waves from distant sources such as stars and black holes that are so faint by the time they reach Earth, scientists have been unable to study them.
The unprecedented sensitivity of the SKA will allow astronomers to peer through space-time to document the early years of the universe, including just after the Big Bang.
Scientists believe the dizzying amount of data, which will be interpreted by the Pawsey Supercomputer in Kensington, will give fresh insights into three mysterious forces that shape the universe: dark matter (material that cannot be observed directly because it does not emit light), dark energy (which pulls matter apart) and cosmic magnetic fields (which influence the evolution of stars and galaxies but have been hard to detect).
The precision with which the radio antennas north-east of Geraldton need to be arranged requires guidance from three SKA “precursor” projects that are extraordinary engineering feats in their own right.
The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) is a high-speed survey tool comprising three dozen 12m dishes near the soon-to-be-constructed radio antennas in the Murchison. It has just become fully operational.
The Murchison Widefield Array, which first went live in 2013, now consists of 8192 spider-like antennas arranged on four-by-four grids over a five-square-kilometre patch of desert. The MWA is able to study so-called neutral hydrogen — the fuel for star formation.
Distributions of neutral hydrogen from a period in the universe known as the Epoch of Reionisation — 13 billion years ago when stars and galaxies were first formed — are being collected by the MWA.
The third SKA precursor project is the under-construction MeerKAT installation in South Africa’s Karoo Desert. The 64 dish antennas, each 13.5m in diameter, will harvest mid-frequency radio data.
Space Minister Roger Cook said the SKA was “a massive stake in the ground that will have a ripple effect which will reverberate for generations to come”.
“We are attracting terrific talent that is sending a message around the world that WA is the place to be in 2023,” he said.
“WA is already home to more than 100 international and Australian organisations operating space and space-related services.”
Central to that trend is the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, which was formed in 2009 and set a task previously thought more impossible than space-time travel: getting rival scientists at Curtin University and the University of Western Australia to work together.
Old rivalries were set aside and the joint venture assisted in the goal of winning the right to host the SKA in WA.
ICRAR is now concentrating on attracting scientists and astronomy students to WA while ensuring the world has access to the astonishing amount of data — enough to fill one million laptops each year — that will soon be unleashed.
ICRAR has cemented itself as one of the top five radio astronomy research institutes in the world and its researchers are already publishing more than 300 peer-reviewed papers each year.
The centre is also helping local scientists win work on the soon-to-be started final stage of the $3.1 billion project.
The tender process for building individual components and supplying services is complicated because more than a dozen countries are bankrolling the initiative. It is managed by the not-for-profit SKA Observatory, which is headquartered near Manchester in Britain.
ICRAR/UWA Associate Professor Sascha Schediwy and his astrophotonics team have won one of the SKA’s most critical contracts — building the hardware that will keep the South African radio dishes perfectly synchronised.
That “frequency distribution system” is considered the SKA’s beating heart because the slightest inaccuracy in timing signals will compromise the entire project.
Professor Schediwy has worked out a way to ensure those time signals do not degrade over the vast distances of fibre-optic cable that will connect the array of dishes.
Mr Cook said WA scientists were uniquely placed to play leading roles because they could adapt remote-operations technology already battle-hardened by the resources sector.
The State’s reputation will be further enhanced today when the State Government reveals that Asia-Pacific’s biggest space agency forum is coming to Perth. About 500 delegates from 40 countries are expected to attend the 30th annual Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum in November 2023.
“Western Australia’s space sector is growing rapidly and is being increasingly recognised on the global stage,” Mr Cook said. “So it is a natural fit to host APRSAF-30 in Perth.”
Japan is a driving force behind APRSAF, which is designed to enhance space co-operation in the region.
“Working together with the Australian Space Agency and the Government of Western Australia, we would like to incorporate the dynamism of Australia’s space activities into APRSAF,” Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency executive Akira Kosaka said.
Head of the Australian Space Agency Enrico Palermo said the forum would “help us grow our respective space sectors, make them stronger, and achieve our space ambitions faster”.