SKA Observatory (SKAO)

The SKA Observatory (SKAO) is an intergovernmental organization building two radio telescopes: SKA-Low in Western Australia, with a planned 131,072 two-meter antennas, and SKA-Mid in South Africa’s Karoo, with 197 dishes. Its headquarters are at Jodrell Bank in the UK. The SKAO convention was signed in Rome in 2019 by seven founding countries, construction began in July 2021, and the combined price tag is about GBP 1 billion.

Flagship instruments

• SKA-Low: fields of small antennas grouped into stations, for low radio frequencies.
• SKA-Mid: an array of dishes for mid frequencies.

Recent results

SKA-Low released its first image on March 18, 2025, made with 1,024 antennas at 150 to 175 MHz and showing 85 of the brightest known galaxies in the field. SKA-Mid recorded its first fringes in January 2026. On the organizational side, France became the 14th member state on June 4, 2026, and Jessica Dempsey became Director-General the same month.

What to watch, 2026-2030

• Late 2026: SKA-Low reaches its AA2 construction milestone.
• 2027: SKA-Mid AA1 complete; SKA-Low science verification begins, with a first data release to the community expected around then.
• 2028: the “AA*” configuration, 307 SKA-Low stations and 144 SKA-Mid dishes.
• March 2029 onward: the staged delivery program ends and early, shared-risk operations begin.

Why scientists are converging here

Attention is shifting before the data arrive. In our Research Pulse count of astro-ph abstracts, “Square Kilometre Array” appeared in 97 papers from April to September 2026, against 49 in the previous six months: the fastest rise among the 40 terms we track. Mentions are a proxy for planning activity, not results, but they match the calendar: science verification starts in 2027. The radio sky is getting crowded with new capacity, from Caltech’s planned Deep Synoptic Array (see Caltech Astronomy) to China’s FAST, and SKA is the largest piece, aimed at cosmology, galaxies and pulsar-based gravitational-wave studies.