‘Project will create equity’

A multimillion-rand radio telescope project that will map out a third of the sky during its four years of observation was launched at the Umhlanga Coastlands Hotel yesterday.

The Hydrogen Intensity and Real Time Analysis eXperiment (Hirax) will be led by young astronomers from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and will be located at the South African Square Kilometre Array (SKA) site in the Karoo, Western Cape.

Hirax – a compact radio telescope array of 1 024 six-metre dishes – will primarily study dark energy and Frequent Radio Bursts (FRB). It will be used in synergy with the 64-dish MeerKAT, the country’s precursor to the SKA.

Dark energy is a theoretical unknown force that confounds gravity in large scales of the universe. FRBs are intense blasts of high energy that last for milliseconds.

Speaking at the launch, Science and Technology Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane said the project was “a perfect example of the willingness of scientists from different parts of the world to learn and understand the universe through scientific tools”.

The project would break down barriers and create equity within the astrophysics field by providing training through all phases of its implementation, said Kubayi-Ngubane.

“Students involved in this project will be ideally placed to lead the next generation of world-class science projects,” she said.

Much of the hardware for the project would be developed and procured from local engineering firms, thereby growing the local manufacturing capacity in radio astronomy technologies.