CSIRO team celebrates establishment of the SKA Observatory

CSIRO’s SKA team joined in the celebration today of the launch of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) and the first meeting of the Observatory’s Council. The Hon Karen Andrews, Minister for Science and Technology provided a ‘statement of support’ from Australia, and Dr Douglas Bock, CASS Director co-represented Australia at the Council meeting from the SKA Australia offices in Canberra.

With this launch of the Observatory, SKAO becomes the world’s second Intergovernmental Organisation (IGO), to be dedicated to ground-based astronomy.

The Council is composed of representatives from the Observatory’s Member States, currently Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and the United Kingdom – as well as Observer countries aspiring to join SKAO. Among these are countries that took part in the design phase of the SKA such as Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland, and whose future accession to SKAO is expected in the near future, once their national processes have been completed. Representatives of national bodies in Japan and South Korea complement the list of Observers in the SKAO Council.

At its first meeting, the SKAO Council approved policies and procedures that have been prepared in recent months, covering governance, funding, programmatic and HR matters, among others. These approvals are required to transfer staff and assets from the SKA Organisation to the Observatory and allow the latter to become a functioning entity.

SKAO will begin recruitment in Australia and South Africa in the next few months, working alongside local partners CSIRO and SARAO to supervise construction, which is expected to start in 2022 and last eight years, with early science opportunities starting in the mid 2020s.

This new artist’s impression of the SKA telescopes was released to coincide with the announcement. It combines images of antennas which are already on the ground at the SKA sites in Australia and South Africa, with artist’s impressions showing the telescopes as they will look when completed.

As with the other milestones leading up to this finale of the SKA’s transformation into an IGO, the announcement attracted international media attention and SKA Headquarters was swamped with congratulations from hundreds of supporters on social media.

The international SKA community sent video messages of support and team photos. Here’s Dr Catherine Cesarsky, Chair of the SKAO Council’s message, one from Professor Phil Diamond, SKA Director General, and here one from our own Dr Sarah Pearce, CSIRO Chief Scientist (acting).

To mark the occasion CSIRO’s SKA team compiled this collage which reveals a number of our people who work on the project. We’re looking forward to introducing each of them and their roles to you this year as we count down to the start of SKA construction in 2022!

In the press:

• On the BBC: Square Kilometre Array: ‘Lift-off’ for world’s biggest telescope
• In Science: Giant radio telescope reaches milestone en route to construction start
• In Forbes: Explained: Why the world’s biggest telescope will span two countries, 131,072 antennas and 197 dishes