Australia Telescope National Facility

ASKAP Timeline

Antennas that make up CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope, June 2012; nine of ASKAP's 36 antennas can be seen in this picture. Credit: Ross Forsyth, CSIRO.

ASKAP, CSIRO's new radio telescope, is located at Inyarrimanha Ilgari Bundara, the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Mid West region of Western Australia. The table below outlines the key stages of construction of the telescope and its supporting infrastructure.

Activity	Date
Parkes Test-bed commissioned	June 2008
Construction of all 36 ASKAP antennas complete	June 2012
Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory (MRO) support infrastructure complete Includes an 800 sq metre ASKAP Control Building, along with water, cooling, power systems and waste management Also includes roads, airstrip, power and optical-fibre distribution, and network connectivity to the Perth-based iVEC Pawsey Supercomputer Centre for science processing	July 2012
Start of system verification testing Includes demonstration of signal processing (early ASKAP commissioning)	August 2012
MRO Support Facility complete 820 sq metre facility based in Geraldton for ASKAP support staff	February 2013
ASKAP BETA (Boolardy Engineering Test Array) Comprises the full MRO infrastructure, with a 6-antenna ASKAP system utilising phased array feed (PAF) receivers This scaled down telescope will allow demonstration and validation of the telescope design within the radio observatory Along with exciting technology, ASKAP BETA will begin producing some science outcomes	July 2013
ASKAP 12 PAF stage Complete 36 antenna array A minimum of 12 antennas equipped with PAF receivers, 6 of which are new generation Mark II PAFs Meaningful astronomical science is possible at this stage	March 2014
Continued PAF roll-out ASKAP fitted with an additional 6 Mark II PAFs bringing the total number of antennas with PAFs to 18 ASKAP becomes a genuinely powerful telescope in its own right, facilitating world-class astronomical research	mid-2014
ASKAP "Early Science" commences Starting with 12, and progressively more, antennas, and an observing bandwidth of 48 MHz	October 2016
36th Mk II PAF installed Installation of all hardware for all antennas follows the following year	November 2017
RACS-I observing begins Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS) first low-band (888 MHz) survey $70m funding upgrade for Pawsey announced the same month	April 2019
Pilot Surveys Phase I observations begin	August 2019
Pilot Surveys Phase II observations begin	July 2021
Full Surveys commence with one-month trial	November 2022

Further Information

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