PROJECT PERIODIC REPORT - SKA Telescope

1 PROJECT PERIODIC REPORT Grant Agreement number: 212243 PROJECT acronym: PREPSKA PROJECT title: A Preparatory phase proposal for the Square Kilometre Array Funding Scheme: SP4-Capacities, Combination of CP & CSA, Integrating Activities / e-Infrastructures / Preparatory phase Date of latest version of Annex I against which the assessment will be made: 4 April 2008 PERIODIC REPORT : 1st x 2nd 3rd 4th Period covered: from 01/04/2008 to 30/09/2009 Name, title and organisation of the scientific representative of the PROJECT 's coordinator1: , Director, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester Tel: +44 (0)161 275 4214 Fax: +44 (0)161 275 4247 E-mail: PROJECT website2 address: 1 Usually the contact person of the coordinator as specified in Art.

2 Of the grant agreement 2 The home page of the website should contain the generic European flag and the FP7 logo which are available in electronic format at the Europa website (logo of the European flag: ; logo of the 7th FP: ). The area of activity of the PROJECT should also be mentioned. Declaration by the scientific representative of the PROJECT coordinator1 I, as scientific representative of the coordinator1 of this PROJECT and in line with the obligations as stated in Article of the Grant Agreement declare that: The attached PERIODIC REPORT represents an accurate description of the work carried out in this PROJECT for this reporting period; The PROJECT (tick as appropriate): has fully achieved its objectives and technical goals for the period; has achieved most of its objectives and technical goals for the period with relatively minor deviations3.

3 Has failed to achieve critical objectives and/or is not at all on schedule4. The public website is up to date, if applicable. To my best knowledge, the financial statements which are being submitted as part of this REPORT are in line with the actual work carried out and are consistent with the REPORT on the resources used for the PROJECT (section 6) and if applicable with the certificate on financial statement. All beneficiaries, in particular non-profit public bodies, secondary and higher education establishments, research organisations and SMEs, have declared to have verified their legal status.

4 Any changes have been reported under section 5 ( PROJECT Management) in accordance with Article of the Grant Agreement. Name of scientific representative of the Coordinator1: ..Philip Date: .. Jan / 2010 Signature of scientific representative of the Coordinator1: . 3 If either of these boxes is ticked, the REPORT should reflect these and any remedial actions taken. 4 If either of these boxes is ticked, the REPORT should reflect these and any remedial actions taken. PrepSKA Mid-term REPORT 15/10/09 Page 3 of 87 1. Publishable summary The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be one of the largest scientific projects ever undertaken.

5 It is a machine designed to answer some of the big questions of our time: what is Dark Energy? Was Einstein right about gravity? What is the nature of dark matter? Can we detect gravitational waves? When and how did the first stars and galaxies form? What was the origin of cosmic magnetism? How do Earth-like planets form? Is there life, intelligent or otherwise, elsewhere in the Universe? There are several issues that need to be addressed before construction of the SKA can begin: 1. What is the design for the SKA? 2. Where will the SKA be located? 3. What is the legal framework and governance structure under which SKA will operate?

6 4. What is the most cost-effective mechanism for the procurement of the various components of the SKA? 5. How will the SKA be funded? This PROJECT , the preparatory study for the SKA (PrepSKA), is designed to address all of these points. PrepSKA will coordinate and integrate R&D work from around the globe in order to develop the fully-costed design for Phase 1 of the SKA, and a deployment plan for the full instrument. With active collaboration between funding agencies and scientists, all of the options for the policy-related questions will be investigated. The principal deliverable will be an implementation plan that will form the basis of a funding proposal to governments to start the construction of the SKA.

7 The SKA will have a collecting area of up to one million square metres spread over at least 3000 km, providing a sensitivity of up to 50 times higher than the Expanded VLA (which will soon be the world s currently most powerful radio Telescope ). In addition, the SKA will deliver an instantaneous field of view (FOV) of up to several tens of square degrees, many times that of existing instruments, and the new possibility of multiple simultaneous users of several large, independent fields-of-view. These capabilities are enabled by a much greater use of information and communications technology than in current designs, and the result will be an extremely powerful survey Telescope with the capability to follow up individual objects with high angular and time resolution.

8 The baseline design for the SKA is an interferometer array capable of imaging the radio sky at frequencies from ~70 MHz to ~25 GHz, and providing an all-sky monitoring capability at frequencies below 1 GHz. The Telescope is to be built in three phases, and will be able to carry out significant scientific observations as it is being built. The concept involves parabolic dishes with innovative feeds to maximize a combination of spatial and frequency coverage; at lower frequencies phased arrays can become cost-effective and offer new operational capabilities. Technological innovation, closely paralleling commercial IT developments, is the key to the design concepts under investigation and to the target cost of billion Euro.

9 Data transport rates are likely to be in the range of 100 Giga-bits/sec to Tera-bits/sec, with Petaflop capacity required for the central processor. Much of the required technology is currently being developed in the course of specific design studies (including the EC funded FP6 SKA Design Study, SKADS) and the construction of several SKA Pathfinder instruments around the world. The final step of integrating the accumulated R&D knowledge into a detailed system design for the SKA, is taking place under the aegis of PrepSKA. PrepSKA Mid-term REPORT 15/10/09 Page 4 of 87 Two locations for the Telescope , Australia and Southern Africa, have been short-listed by the International SKA Steering Committee as acceptable sites for the SKA.

10 Objectives The principal objectives of PrepSKA are: to produce a deployment plan for the full SKA, and a detailed costed system design for Phase 1 of the SKA; to further characterise the two candidate SKA sites in Southern Africa and Australia and to analyse the various risks associated with locating the SKA at each of the sites; to develop options for viable models of governance and the legal framework for the SKA during its construction and operational phases; to develop options for how the SKA should approach procurement and how it should involve industry in such a global PROJECT ; to investigate all aspects of the financial model required to ensure the construction, operation and, ultimately, the decommissioning of the SKA; to demonstrate the impact of the SKA on society, the economy and knowledge.