Science pays off for Karoo

The small town of Carnarvon in Northern Cape is already benefiting from the construction of the world's biggest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), in the middle of the Karoo.

More than 200 people from the town and its surroundings have been employed and hotels have been opened in preparation for an expected influx of scientists from all over the world.

This was revealed by local SKA team leader Dr Bernie Faranoff during President Jacob Zuma's visit to the telescope site yesterday. South Africa won the bid to co-host the SKA with Australia in May.

"We have many people working in support services, catering, accommodation and so on. So there is more economic activity, shops opening, restaurants opening, hotels, because there are a lot of contractors coming in," Faranoff said.

He said the local SKA team was being inundated with job applications from scientists from all over the world.

"Five years ago we had to work really hard to persuade people to come and work in South Africa; now we are getting outstandingly good applicants and the problem is now we have to turn away people we would have loved to have had a few years ago because we haven't got space for them."

Faranoff said the 3000-dish radio telescope, would cost about R27.9-billion. The biggest running cost would be electricity.

He said negotiations were continuing about the funding of the project and South Africa's contribution was yet to be determined.

South Africa has installed seven dishes at the SKA site to form the KAT 7 telescope, and will add 64 to form the MeerKAT array, an SKA precursor.

"Part of our contribution will be what we have already put in the ground. We are also providing support to the head office [and] we count that in. We will have to put in some cash, as have all the countries [involved] but most of what we put in we would like to be in-kind contributions," Faranoff said.

The construction of the first phase of the SKA will start in 2016. The second phase will be built from 2019 to 2024. Faranoff said there was a lot of work ahead.

"We are building an underground room to contain all the computers because computers generate radio interference which would interfere with the telescope.

"We are also building an air strip."