This page will be updated monthly to report the current conditions of the Observatory, and current expectations for data delivery.

Progress of some of the ASKAP Survey Science Projects has been slower than expected due to a range of issues, not limited to delays due to the Setonix system and other upgrades, competing resource allocation, time-consuming calibration, increased solar activity, lower than expected science quality of some data, and inefficient communications between the ATNF and Survey Science Teams. In response, the new ASKAP leadership team paused the existing meetings and communications to the SSTs, temporarily simplified the observing pool to only include those surveys reporting sufficient data quality in the low-band, and commenced a process to meet with the Principal Investigators of teams, and define a path forward to address the current concerns. This path was communicated to the SSTs in June 2025. 

Current Projects in the Observing Pool (Feb 2026) 

  • FLASH
  • FLASH
  • VAST Extragalactic
  • VAST Galactic

Next Projects in the Observing Pool (Mar 2026) 

  • FLASH
  • WALLABY
  • VAST ExtraGalactic

Expected Observing Schedule and Progress

This is the expected timeline for the progress of the Survey Science Projects. This timeline aligns with the RASSP recommendations, with an additional year, which extends into 2029. Realisation of this timeline is dependent on on-time delivery of projects under the Key Capabilities program, and no major failures in the telescope or HPC systems. This timeline will be updated monthly to reflect any changes, and these will be communicated to the community. 

 The table below shows the actual hours observed per survey since June 2025.

Survey Hours completed prior to 01/06/25 Hours completed before 01/02/2026 RASSP total allocation (hr) 
EMU 3053 4088 8533 
WALLABY 680 1000 8832 
GASKAP-OH 30 30 524 
GASKAP-HI 158 333 4440 
FLASH 348 986 1200 
DINGO 168 312 3200 
VAST 633 683 2134 

Completing Stage 1 of the timeline

The goal of stage 1 was to complete the observing for FLASH.  We are close, but (1) expect one extra 4-week block with significant FLASH observing and (2) that we will need to squeeze in a few FLASH observations later in the year because of day-time and LST-constraints.  To finish FLASH we currently require 214 hours of observation or 107 observations.  We therefore require approximately the following to complete stage 1: 

4-week date range EMU (hrs) WALLABY (hrs) GASKAP-OH (hrs) GASKAP-HI (hrs) FLASH (hrs) DINGO (hrs) VAST (hrs) 
11/02/26 to 10/03/26 200    144  30 
11/03/26 to 07/04/26  160   144  30  

Observing progress