Inside S.Africa's 'world class' telescope project

For the past seven years South Africa’s MeerKAT radio telescope project has put it on the map of global astronomy. The Meerkat is probably the premier facility of its type in the world today. It was inaugurated in 2018, funded, designed and constructed by South African and South African agencies and has been undertaking transformational ground breaking science for the last seven years.

Adrian Tiplady, Deputy Managing Director, SARAO said  "A project like Meerkat is significant. It's fundamental to the development of a knowledge economy. And so it becomes a catalyst for development of new skills, new competencies and next generation technologies."

The 64 antennas of the telescope are just the start of an even bigger project, the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Observatory that is set to be the world's most powerful radio telescope when it is completed by 2030.