2024-08-01 06:47:40
China has sent the first batch of medium-frequency antennas to South Africa for the construction of the world’s largest radio telescope, called SKA (Square Kilometer Array), Xinhua reported.
The antennas were sent from Shenjiazhuang, the capital of northern China’s Hebei province.
The SKA telescope is a network of hundreds of radio antennas of various types and sizes that are located at several locations in Australia and Africa. The project is financed, built and managed jointly with more than 10 countries. The telescope differs from any other in that it will have a much higher sensitivity and research speed, writes BTA.
The construction and operation of the telescope is managed by the international SKAO consortium, which currently includes eight countries. One of them is China, responsible for the design, manufacture, transportation, integration and commissioning of 64 sets of medium-frequency antennas for the telescope. The delivery marks the beginning of the mass production phase of the antenna structure.
It is assumed that the telescope will contribute to solving fundamental questions of astrophysics about the origin and evolution of the universe. For example, the telescope’s high sensitivity will make it possible to detect very weak radio signals from cosmic sources billions of light-years from Earth, including signals emitted in the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang.