Another eye in sky, on ground: India is now part of world’s largest radio telescope project

India, through the Pune-based National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA) and some other institutions, has been involved in the development of SKA since its inception in the 1990s.

Considering the multinational collaboration, SKAO was established as an intergovernmental organisation in 2021 following years of negotiation in which India, too, participated.

Countries have to sign, and ratify, the SKAO convention to formally become members. The Government’s approval for joining the project, with a financial sanction of Rs 1,250 crore, is the first step towards the ratification.

The approval, which the Department of Atomic Energy announced in its 2023 year-ending note, comes weeks after India gave its go-ahead to construct the third node of the US-based Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Hingoli district of Maharashtra.

Gravitational wave research is one of most promising fields for scientific discovery. The first detection of gravitational waves by the two existing LIGO detectors in the US won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017.

The SKA will also search for gravitational waves but is meant to study a range of phenomena being able to peer much deeper into the universe — more than 3,000 trillion km — to study galaxies and stars in greater detail.

These are aimed at advancing the scope of astronomical observations for improving the overall understanding of the universe and its evolution.

India’s main contribution to the SKA is in the development, and operation, of the Telescope Manager element, the “neural network” or the software that will make the telescope work.

NCRA, a unit of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, which operates India’s largest network of radio telescopes called the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) near Pune, led an international team from nine institutions and seven countries to develop the software.

It is the success of building and operating GMRT that landed NCRA this responsibility with the SKA. GMRT is the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope operating within the 110-1,460 MegaHertz frequency range. This unique telescope has, so far, yielded remarkable scientific results after studying pulsars, supernovae, quasars, galaxies and its observation time has always remained oversubscribed.

In 2021, GMRT became only the third in India to be recognised with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Milestone facility. Back then, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called this recognition as a rare feat earned by NCRA. Modi had hailed the contributions made by the astronomers towards deepening scientific understanding of the universe using GMRT.

In June last year, GMRT was among the six top radio telescopes used to enable the detection of the nano-hertz gravitational waves for the first time.

The SKA-India consortium comprises engineers and scientists from over 20 national-level research institutions which include: NCRA; Aryabhatta Institute of Observational Sciences; Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, IIT-Kharagpur; IISER, Mohali and Thiruvananthapuram; TIFR; Raman Research Institute; Indian Institute of Science and Physical Research Laboratory.

Some of the countries taking part in building the SKA include the UK, Australia, South Africa, Canada, China, France, India, Italy and Germany.

(Anjali Marar works at the Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru.)