In SKA Phase one, the addition of 190 SKA dish antennas will expand the 64-dish MeerKAT precursor array. South Africa and eight African partner countries will host the dish array in Phase two of the SKA and will also host the Phase two mid frequency aperture array antennas.
See the South African SKA site on Google maps.
SKA Precursor – MeerKAT
South Africa’s SKA Project is building the MeerKAT telescope, located at the SKA site. MeerKAT will be incorporated into Phase one of the SKA. The MeerKAT telescope will comprise 64 offset Gregorian dishes each 13.5 m in diameter. The first seven dishes of MeerKAT are now complete and are known as KAT-7.
Working with South African industry and universities, and collaborating with institutions around the world, the South African team has developed technologies and systems for the MeerKAT, including innovative composite telescope dishes and cutting edge signal processing hardware and algorithms.
The first five years of observing time have already been allocated to international project teams for ten priority large surveys.
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