Autumn 2023 SKA-Low update

Last year ended with a number of exciting celebrations; on 5 November the Wajarri Yamaji organised and celebrated the ILUA registration at an event at the Murchison Settlement and on 5 December the SKAO launched on-site construction activities for the SKA-Low telescope at Inyarramanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory.

Preparatory works

We are now happy to be moving ahead with preparatory works on the SKA-Low site, with a range of activities underway or soon to begin. We will be starting with UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)-based photographic measurements of the land, followed by geotechnical tests (such as boring holes to look at soil and rock hardness) at the construction camp location and the site of the emergency airstrip and main road. These are important in informing the final design of foundations and earth works. After that, we will perform soil resistivity measurements at a number of locations – amongst other things, this will help us understand the earth in terms of how the mesh ground plane for the antenna stations will perform, and what earthing connection is required. Following this, we move into a period with significant ground-based surveying activities.

The proposed activities and associated ground disturbance has been made known to the ILUA Heritage Protection Committee through the Observatory Site Entity and Wajarri Yamaji monitors will be present during initial ground-disturbing activities.

Continued expansion

In February we received the first shipment of antennas from SIRIO, the manufacturer in Italy, which will be used to build AAVS (Aperture Array Verification System) 3.0. These 256 antennas will be deployed by a team from Curtin University, contractors and SKAO in early May, along with some of the next generation prototype digital systems.

Our interim Engineering Operations Centre (EOC) in Geraldton continues to grow – both from a staff perspective and physically. In February we completed the installation of the relevant rooms for the Integration and Test Facility (ITF) and the ITF Infrastructure readiness review was held. Test cases are now being prepared by the AIV (Assembly, Integration and Verification) team. This facility is critical to the project – it is the first place that all the different sub-systems of the telescope come together for the first time to be tested as a whole.

We now have 38 SKA-Low staff in Australia, across all business areas, which is fantastic to see. Our team in Geraldton has grown to 15 staff, including several people who have joined us since our December update: Indre Asmussen (Site Environmental Advisor), Nicole Robins (Procurement Specialist), Inge Savage (Telescope Maintenance Manager) and Allan Wilkes (Logistics and Planning Manager).

The next three months promises to be very busy as we gear up with further early construction activities, leading to establishment of the construction camp and early works on the various infrastructure contracts during the Q3 2023. I want to particular thank CSIRO’s Observatory Site Entity team for their huge levels of help in getting us underway in this early phase, as we have been establishing all the right documents, procedures and communications paths essential to the success of such a complex undertaking.

Ant Schinckel, SKA-Low Telescope Construction Director, SKAO