South Africa and Australia are the two finalists in the competition to host the project, which will eventually link thousands of radio dishes to make a massive antenna with a total surface area of one square kilometre (250 acres). The $2.0 billion telescope, the brainchild of an international consortium of scientists, will be 50 to 100 times more sensitive than today's best radio telescopes.
Scientists will decide by early March whether the South African and Australian SKA site proposals pass muster. The consortium will then choose the winner, a decision the South Africans say will be political and economic as well as scientific. South Africa also plans to start construction next year on a 64-antenna radio telescope called MeerKAT that would be one of the five most accurate in the world. Observation slots at the MeerKAT are already fully booked for its first five years and the government has declared the site, a "Radio Astronomy Reserve".
Design and pre-construction on the SKA are scheduled to begin in 2013 and the project is expected to be finished around 2024. The South Africa government has already invested R635 million in seven years to build MeerKAT and plans to spend another 500 million rand a year to 2016. "With a project like this, you don't make money, but you get a lot more. You develop scientific capacity," Nadeem Oozeer, researcher from Mauritius, told Times Live. "In Mauritius, we've got five graduates with (doctorate) degrees. Why not an African Nobel prize winner?"
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