The SKA Observatory’s 2024 Annual Report is now available, covering a memorable year with the start of deployment of antennas on the SKA telescope sites in Australia and South Africa. The publication chronicles many major developments that took place in 2024, with the installation of the first SKA-Low antennas in Australia in March and the assembly of the first SKA-Mid dish in South Africa in July. The Observatory also celebrated the “first fringes” from SKA-Low when the signals from two antenna stations were combined for the first time. In August, the International Astronomical Union held its General Assembly in Cape Town, the first IAUGA on the African continent. TheSKAO was well represented with a striking stand and the launch of Cosmic Echoes, an Indigenous astronomy art exhibition. The SKAO also kept growing with three new countries joining – Canada, India and Germany – and 45 new staff recruited across the three host countries, including through the SKAO’s collaboration partners CSIRO and SARAO. The image above captures some of the SKAO activities in 2024 by numbers.