SKA Project gets underway

The Square Kilometer Array Telescope (SKA) Organization recently announced that South Africa will build two of the three SKA telescope receivers while Australia will have the opportunity to build the third. Many pundits had put their money behind South Africa being chosen to build all three receivers due to the apparently high quality bid document submitted by the country in a collaborative submission together with other SADC countries. Questions have now arisen as to the reasons why the SKA Organization split the build responsibility between South Africa and Australia. One of the answers is that the SKA Organization simply wanted to spread its risk, such that if one country failed to deliver the goods, the project would still go ahead, even if partly so. 

The building of the receivers is expected to create many jobs in South Africa where the adult unemployment rate is at a shocking 25%. Ultimately, the SKA project is about the building of the world's biggest telescope and the building of the receivers is the first steps towards the building of the actual telescope.