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After many months of waiting, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation finally announced that the massive telescope array will be shared between Australia-NZ and South Africa. The comment below was sent in addition to comments from the Australian SMC.
Dr Stephen Serjeant, Head of Astronomy and Reader in Cosmology at The Open University, said:
“This was always going to be an extremely difficult and finely-balanced decision, given that both the Australian and the South African bids were extremely strong, with excellent governmental support, existing investment in precursor telescopes, plus very fine protected sites for radio astronomy perfect for the SKA location. This split site decision will involve some increased complication and cost, but both bids have managed to build tremendous national and international momentum and support, so any single-site decision would have been a very bitter blow to one community.
“I’m confident that the SKA split-site decision will be to the lasting benefit of astronomy as a whole, as well as to the industrial bases in all the hosting countries. The SKA itself will revolutionise many areas of fundamental science, from cosmology to fundamental physics to the birth of planets to the first light in the Universe.”