SQUARE
KILOMETRE ARRAY OBSERVATORY – SCI & TECH
News:
India to participate in
the international mega science project SKA
What's
in the news?
●
The Government of India has accorded its
approval for India’s participation in the international mega science project,
Square Kilometer Array (SKA), at an estimated cost of ₹ 1250 Cr.
Key
takeaways:
●
This approval covers funding support for
the construction phase of the international SKA Observatory (SKAO) spread over
the next 7 years.
●
The project will be jointly funded by the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Department
of Science and Technology (DST), with DAE as the lead agency.
●
The Indian participation in SKA is a truly
nationwide, inclusive project led by a consortium of more than 20 academic and
research institutes (with NCRA-TIFR as the nodal institute).
Square
Kilometre Array (SKA) Project:
●
It is an international effort to build the
world’s largest radio telescope.
●
Once constructed, the SKA will be the most
powerful radio telescope ever built, capable of detecting faint radio signals from extreme distances, with
eventually over a square kilometre (one million square metres) of collecting
area.
Location:
●
It is not a single telescope. It consists
of an array of antennas strategically designed and set up in South Africa and
Australia.
●
South
Africa – host high and mid-frequency dish antennas (between
350 MHz and 15.4 GHz).
●
Australia
– Low-frequency antennas (between 50-350 MHz).
Goals:
●
To study the universe and its evolution, origin and evolution of cosmic magnetism
and dark energy and evolution of galaxies.
●
To detect very weak extra-terrestrial
signals and search for molecules that support life.
Collaborative
efforts:
●
It will also be one of the world’s largest
collaborative research projects, involving thousands of researchers and the
world’s fastest supercomputers.
Square
Kilometre Array Observatory:
●
Founded in 2019, the Square Kilometre
Array Observatory (SKAO) has 16
consortium members — Australia, South Africa, Canada, China, India, Japan,
South Korea, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and Italy.
Headquarters:
Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK.
India's
Contribution:
●
The Indian research partner for the SKA
project is Pune’s Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope, operated by the National
Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
(TIFR).
●
India’s main contribution to the SKA is in
the development, and operation, of the Telescope Manager element, the “neural
network” or the software that will make the telescope work.