At the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory last night, where they had an open house (more about that
HERE), I attended a talk called "Towards A Complete History Of Time" a good portion of which was talking about some of the new telescopes coming online in the near future.
Of note were two:
James Webb Space Telescope
Square-Kilometer Array
The Square-Kilometer Array was of particular interest as it is an undoubtedly massive project and will be an amazing accomplishment.
The most likely candidate for a location is Western Australia. The whole telescope will be laid out over an area of up to 3,000 KM, with the furthest stations for the telescope being in New Zealand. It will consist of a large central station and satellite stations arranged in a spiral pattern radiating out over hundreds and thousands of kilometers.
This all may seem very overwhelming so here is a visual representation of what it will look like:
This is configuration the stations would have in Australia:
The significance of all of this is that this telescope would have
50 times the sensitivity of current radio telescopes. That is huge. We could see things with this telescope that would truly expand our knowledge of the universe immensely. It is all quite amazing.
The project has a projected cost of $1.6 billion and will begin construction in 2010, operation starting in 2015, full operation and completion in 2020.
It should be noted that this project has huge implications for SETI, as the range at which SKA will be able to scan for signals from Earth-like planets is many orders of magnitude larger than current telescopes.
Links:
SKA website
Wikipedia article
Square-Kilometer Array
