Telescope array can benefit UK firms

THE system engineer working on the world’s largest telescope told delegates at a national space conference in the North East that there were “substantial opportunities” for British companies to get involved in the project.

Tim Stevenson said there were opportunities to supply a wide range of goods and services for the £1.2bn revolutionary Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project during his speech at Spacetech, a conference held at NETPark (the North East Technology Park) in Sedgefield, County Durham.

Stevenson said the project would need IT on all scales – from microcontrollers to Exascale supercomputers – office, service and laboratory buildings, HVAC technology, power generation and distribution technology, including renewable technology.

“It will create thousands of high quality jobs, both at SPO (Ska Project Office) headquarters in the UK and at the sites of the telescope themselves. There are great opportunities for forward thinking companies,” he said.

“We’ll be looking for companies which can offer advanced manufacturing techniques and large production runs for the antennas and the millions of elements behind them.”