Posted: Sat, May 26, 2012, 7:33 AM ET (1133 GMT)
A giant distributed radio telescope will be split over sites in South Africa and Australia, astronomers announced Friday. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) Organization said Friday that dishes for the radio telescope will be built on sites in South Africa and Australia, with the majority of the telescopes being placed in South Africa. The two countries had been competing to win the SKA, with only one of them expected to win the radio telescope. The SKA, so named because it will have an overall collecting area of one square kilometer, making it far more sensitive than existing radio telescopes. Building the SKA will cost an estimated €1.5 billion (US$1.9 billion), with construction scheduled to start in 2016.

Related Links:

•  BBC article
•  Nature News article
•  SPACE.com article
•  AFP article
•  SKA Organization press release