The $3 billion Square Kilometre Array is designed to detect faint signals from space. The challenge? Building the infrastructure behind it without creating signals of its own.
Around 800 kilometres north of Perth in Australia, on the ancestral lands of the Wajarri Yamaji people, one of the world’s most ambitious science infrastructure projects is starting to deliver.
The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) – a $3 billion telescope project spanning two continents – has already produced the most detailed map ever made of the magnetic fields running through our galaxy.
RLB has provided cost management and quantity surveying services on the SKA project since the bid in 2012, working alongside Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, and engineering partner Aurecon.
Mark Bendotti, former Managing Director of RLB Western Australia and now Senior Consultant, has been with the project since concept stage. “Scientific advancement like SKA depends on an infrastructure backbone: roads, power, communications, processing facilities and thousands of individual components working together,” Mark says.
Reading signs across the sky
The Australian array, dubbed SKA-Low, is one half of the project. Its counterpart, SKA-Mid, is under construction in South Africa.
Together, the two arrays will give the SKA a collecting area of roughly one square kilometre – the source of its name – and survey the sky 10,000 times faster than current technology.
SKA-Low is not a conventional telescope with a single dish. Instead, thousands of two-metre-tall antennas, often likened to Christmas trees, are being installed.
In March 2025, SKA-Low captured 85 galaxies in its first image of the sky. Remarkably, just 1,024 antennas were used. That’s less than 1% of the 131,072 antennas that will eventually make up the completed telescope. Even at this early stage, the image quality exceeded scientists’ expectations.
When fully operational, the SKA-Low array will generate data at rates exceeding global internet traffic. This data must be processed, transported and stored without compromising the radio-quiet conditions essential to the telescope’s performance.
Building for silence
The central challenge of the SKA build is one most construction teams never need to consider: the building itself must not interfere with the instrument it houses.
The Central Processing Facility, officially named Ngurra-Maga, meaning “home of the head” in the Wajarri language, is quite literally the brain of the telescope. Because the computers, cabling and even lighting inside generate signals that could interfere with the ultra-sensitive antennas outside, a fully welded, double-shielded steel enclosure keeps those signals contained.
That enclosure incorporates two Faraday cages. These metal screens block electromagnetic energy from escaping. Inside, servers process many terabytes of data every day without leaking stray radio-frequency interference towards the antennas.
Specialised processors filter this enormous volume of data, retaining only the most valuable information before it travels over the 10TB/s fibre link to supercomputers in Perth.
The shielding is so thorough that even the entrances function as airlocks. The inner door will not open until the outer one is closed.
To manage the practical risks of building in one of the world’s most remote locations, the facility is being prefabricated in modules and transported to the site. This approach keeps labour costs within budget and reduces the quality risks that come with remote construction.
“The SKA project faces the same challenges as any major project. The difference is that the outcome isn’t a building, road or utility. It’s a tool that could transform our understanding of the universe.”
Respecting Country while reaching for the stars
The site itself carries deep significance. CSIRO has named it Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, meaning “sharing sky and stars” in the Wajarri language.
Building on Wajarri Yamaji Country has shaped the project itself. An expanded land use agreement was signed with Traditional Owners in 2022, and more than 400 kilometres of land was walked and surveyed by Wajarri Elders, heritage experts, archaeologists and ethnologists ahead of construction.
Where heritage areas were identified, alternative locations and routes were examined and preservation zones excluded from construction. A Cultural Heritage Management Plan guides work on site, with Wajarri site monitors tracking construction activities and day-to-day compliance.
The Wajarri Yamaji people also retain access to the vast majority of the observatory area to exercise their native title rights.
From the outback to the supercomputer
Data from the SKA-Low will first flow to a custom processing facility on site, delivered by principal SKA-Low infrastructure contractor Ventia in collaboration with CSIRO and Aurecon. From there, it will travel by fibre-optic cable to the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre in Perth for processing and imaging. This project, which RLB has helped to deliver, is targeted for completion in 2028.
The SKA is one of the most ambitious scientific infrastructure projects ever undertaken.
In many ways, it faces the same challenges as any major project: long-term planning, technical complexity, collaboration across multiple stakeholders and disciplined delivery. The difference is that the outcome isn’t a building, road or utility. It’s a tool that could transform our understanding of the universe.
Fast facts
131,072
Antennas, each two metres tall and shaped like a Christmas tree
16
Participant countries with 1,000-plus scientists, engineers and policymakers
230
Kilometres of roads and tracks (143 miles).
FURTHER INFORMATION:
