The talk will present the Square Kilometre Array in all aspects. It will address the organisation with the headquarters at Jodrell Bank, the member countries and explain the the transition between the SKA Organisation that designed the telescopes and the Intergovernmental Organisation " SKA Observatory" that will build and operate the telescopes. The talk will briefly explain what the major science cases are for the Observatory and present the telescope designs for both the Mid Frequency telescope in South Africa and the Low Frequency telescope in Australia and the technical challenges the SKA telescopes are facing in terms of data and operations. In more depth the architecture and construction of the SKA-Low telescope in the Murchison Desert including some current prototyping work will be addressed.
The conclusion will look at the cultural challenges involving society and science for an Intergovernmental Organisation in the 21st century.
About the speaker
André van Es has a master in Aerospace Engineering from the Delft Technical University where he graduated in 1987. In 2016 he obtained a MA in Philosophy at Groningen University, specialising in Philosophy of Science. His professional experience started at Thales where he first worked as a consultant to the sales department, later transferred to the design department and during the last four years as test manager testing (phased-array) antenna systems. At 2000 he started at ASTRON, first as head of the Project Management Bureau, 6 months as head of the R&D department (a.i.) and he continued as a project manager of international projects with European Projects as a specialty and in an advisory role to the ASTRON management. In 2015 he started at SKAO as Engineering Project Manager for the Signal Transport and Timing Element (SaDT) and the Mid Frequency Aperture Array. Now he is Sr. Project Manager for the SKA Low Telescope, built in the Murchison Desert in Australia. This array consists of 130.000 log periodic antennas, divided in 512 stations with a baseline of 65 kilometer.
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