Grant: Special Research Opportunity Program - Project

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is a global project to design and build a next-generation international radio telescope operating at metre to centimetre wavelengths. With a collecting area of up to 1 million square meters spread out over 3000 km, the SKA will be a unique world facility, and one of the largest scientific projects ever undertaken. By exploiting advances in information and communications technologies the SKA will image vast volumes of the Universe 10,000 times faster than any imaging telescope ever built. It is 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? More than 50 institutes in 20 countries worldwide are actively involved in the development of the SKA. Canada has been a leader in the development of the international project since the beginning, and participation in the SKA is one of the two highest priority projects identified in the Canadian Long Range Plan for Astronomy. The level of technological and project maturity is such that the SKA project is entering the final design phase required before construction, with over 200M Euros being spent on SKA R&D over the next four years. The international community has coordinated a 4-year design and prototype program beginning in 2008 under the umbrella of the European 7th Framework Programme, that will lead to a fully-costed design for the first stages of the SKA and a deployment plan for the full instrument. Canada brings to this international effort leadership in scientific planning and in design innovations for some of the critical technologies that are required for the SKA. This proposal will fund Canada's participation in the international design work, advancing our national goal to be a partner in the SKA.