New Zealand enters talks for world's biggest radio telescope - the Square Kilometre Array

The Square Kilometre Array artist impression. The telescope will boast image resolution quality 50 times that of the Hubble. Photo / SKA

New Zealand has agreed to enter treaty talks with nine other nations to decide whether it should commit to help build the world's biggest radio telescope that could unlock answers to the origins of the universe.

Scientists visited the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project site 600km north of Perth in the Western Australian outback this week.

Steven Joyce, Minister of Science and Innovation, has agreed that New Zealand should enter treaty negotiations with SKA Project's nine other member countries - Australia, South Africa, China, India, Canada, Italy, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands - to decide whether it will help build the giant NZ$2.9 billion telescope.

"The purpose of these negotiations is for countries to get a reasonable idea on what their contribution could look like if they decide to participate in the future," said Kjesten Wiig, national manager of commercialisation at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE).

MBIE officials will attend talks to see if New Zealand will join a future inter-governmental organisation, which would be governed by a treaty and oversee the construction of the telescope.

The New Zealand government has already committed $3.2 million to the SKA project's design phase.

AUT University (AUT) and Victoria University Wellington (VUW) hold contracts with MBIE, and are getting help from New Zealand technology companies Catalyst and Open Parallel to develop the astonishing computing power required by the radio-telescope - a trillion times more than was needed to send a man to the moon - which does not yet exist.

"The SKA will require significant advances in computing, renewable power generation and data storage solutions," said Dr Wiig. "New Zealand is well placed to contribute to the design, prototyping and testing of technologies in this area. In fact, a key benefit of the project is the economic development opportunities that may result from advances in computing made by VUW, AUT and associated industry partners."

Kiwi scientists and engineers are strongly represented among the more than 350 working on the telescope, which will allow astronomers to survey tens of millions of distant galaxies and collect vast quantities of new data about the universe - providing answers to age old questions concerning the very beginnings of the universe and the nature of dark matter.

Construction on what will be the world's most-technologically-advanced telescope is due to start in 2018.

Another telescope at the SKA site - Murchison Widefield Array telescope - has already collected six petabytes of data, enough to fill more than a million DVDs, since starting operations in July 2013. It has even detected gas from a galaxy five billion light years away.

Dr Wiig said the SKA project will enable astronomers to monitor the sky in unprecedented detail.

"It presents an excellent opportunity for New Zealand science and business to benefit from involvement in a project of such international scale and significance, and for New Zealand to showcase our expertise in ICT and software development," she said.