Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) Commissioned. (October 6, 2012)

Although it will eventually form part of the complete Square Kilometre Arrey (SKA) whose tentative completion date is at least ten years hence, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) was officially completed yesterday. Built at Western Australia's Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory it currently consists of 36 12 meters dishes, but construction of an additional 60 dishes is scheduled to begin in 2016 to fulfil its role as part of the SKA.

ASKAP per se with its current dishes, supercomputer and all the required infrastructure is a $400 million facility which CSIRO's astrophysicist Brian Boyle expects will begin data collection by Christmas with possible publication of initial analysis of the data toward the end of 2013.

Dr Boyle told Science's Dennis Normile that ASKAP will give astronomers an unprecedented look at black holes, the gas clouds from which stars form, and "exotic objects that push the boundaries of our knowledge of the physical laws in the universe".