On the wide-open plains northeast of Cape Town, South Africa, the largest and most powerful radio telescope in the Southern Hemisphere is listening to the sky. The last of 64 13.5-meter dishes was installed late last year, and next month, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will officially open the facility. MeerKAT, which stands for Karoo Array Telescope combined with the Afrikaans word for "more," is one of several precursor instruments for the proposed Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be Earth9s largest radio array by far. That effort got a boost this week as Spain agreed to join the 10 existing member countries. The first phase of SKA construction, which could begin in 2020 at an estimated cost of €798 million, would add another 133 dishes to the MeerKAT array, extending it across 150 kilometers, and place 130,000 smaller radio antennas across Australia—but only if member governments agree to fully fund the work. Months of delicate negotiations lie ahead.

中文翻译：

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无线电阵列在全球南部初具规模

在南非开普敦东北部开阔的平原上，南半球最大、最强大的射电望远镜正在聆听天空。去年年底安装了最后一个 64 个 13.5 米的天线，下个月，南非总统西里尔·拉马福萨将正式启用该设施。MeerKAT 代表卡鲁阵列望远镜，与南非荷兰语中的“更多”一词相结合，是拟议的平方公里阵列 (SKA) 的几种先驱仪器之一，SKA 将成为迄今为止地球上最大的无线电阵列。随着西班牙同意加入现有的 10 个成员国，这一努力在本周得到了推动。SKA 建设的第一阶段将于 2020 年开始，预计耗资 7.98 亿欧元，将为 MeerKAT 阵列再增加 133 个天线，将其延伸 150 公里，并放置 130、000 个较小的无线电天线遍布澳大利亚——但前提是成员国政府同意为这项工作提供全部资金。数月的微妙谈判就在眼前。