PLANS for the biggest radio telescope ever conceived, to be developed in Western Australia's Murchison region have progressed, with an Indigenous land use agreement (ILUA) between the Wajarri people and the Federal government now signed and registered after seven years of negotiations.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will consist of 130,000 individual radio antennas and associated electronics built and spread over thousands of square kilometres, about 800km north of Perth.
Following an internal competition within Australia, the Mid West was selected as the location for the telescope due to its low population density and remote location.
The telescope will work in tandem with an array of 197 dishes in the Karoo, South Africa, north of Cape Town, which will allow the entire history of the universe to be examined.
The project is scheduled for completion from 2028-2030.
The first construction phase started last year and has ramped up over the past 12 months, with a large number of procurement contracts brought to market.
Curtin University's International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) professor Steven Tingay said contracts for the supply of materials and services for the program were well advanced across the SKA member countries.
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"The largest of contracts in Australia for all the supporting infrastructure is working toward award," Mr Tingay said.
He said access to the construction site and the ground work was possible this year and was confident workforce pressures were also being factored in and recognised by the SKA Observatory.
"It represents one of the many challenges in establishing the world's biggest radio telescope in the world's best location for radio astronomy, in Western Australia - a facility with a 50-year lifetime," he said.
"Nothing of this scale and ambition is challenge free."
Over the past decade, the Curtin University node of ICRAR has worked on the design and prototyping of the low frequency antennas, electronics that support those antennas, and testing of the overall performance of the SKA telescope system.
"That means we have built several iterations of an SKA station prototype," Mr Tingay said
"A station is the basic unit of the SKA telescope, composed of 256 antennas packed together into a 38 metre diameter footprint.
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"Ultimately, the goal is that the SKA in Australia will consist of 512 such stations."
Curtin University's ICRAR has undertaken this work in close collaboration with colleagues in other SKA countries - with Mr Tingay highlighting their "talented and hardworking colleagues from Italy".
More broadly, Curtin University established Australia's primary science precursor for the SKA, the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), in 2013.
Since then, Mr Tingay said the MWA had collected 44 petabytes of data, supported many hundreds of researchers around the world, generated more than 300 scientific publications, and upskilled the global astronomy workforce in preparation to use the SKA.
Since 2009, the State government has funded ICRAR, along with Curtin University and The University of Western Australia in an unincorporated joint venture partnership.
Federal Science Minister Ed Husic said the ILUA which enables the historic international radio telescope to be built on Wajarri Yamaji land will provide the Wajarri Yamaji with sustainable and intergenerational benefits in areas such as enterprise and training, education and culture.
"They are the first astronomers on that country with a rich cultural heritage that is connected to their observation of the stars," Mr Husic said.
As part of the ILUA, the Wajarri Yamaji have renamed the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory which will house the SKA telescope to 'Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara', meaning 'Sharing the Sky and Stars'.
"It's inspiring that we can bring together First Nations knowledge with this landmark international astronomy project," Mr Husic said.
