South Africa’s giant SKA telescope “comes alive”

One of the world's biggest science projects passed a milestone in South Africa this year. On 7 January 2026, the SKA-Mid radio telescope in the Northern Cape achieved "first fringes": two of its dishes combined their signals and worked together as a single instrument for the first time.

"This is the first true test that all our systems are working together, and that the SKA-Mid telescope is alive," said Professor Philip Diamond, Director-General of the SKA Observatory.

What they saw

The two dishes observed a radio galaxy about 2.6 billion light-years away, chosen because its signal is well understood, which makes it a good test. The achievement shows that the telescope's tracking, super-cooled receivers, precise timing and data processing all work together.

The Square Kilometre Array

The SKA is being built in two places: SKA-Mid, a dish array in South Africa's Karoo, and SKA-Low, an array of antennas in Western Australia. When complete, SKA-Mid will have 197 dishes, including the 64 dishes of MeerKAT, the telescope built and operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).

Seven SKA-Mid dishes had been assembled on site at the time of the milestone, with more on the way. The next step is an image from a four-dish array.

Why it matters

The SKA will help scientists study the early universe, how galaxies form and the nature of gravity. Hosting it has already built a generation of African engineers and astronomers, and puts South Africa at the centre of global science. Africa's space ambitions are growing too, from Senegal's satellites to new national space programmes.