In the middle of Western Australia, hundreds of kilometres from civilisation, a multi-national team is installing antennas to test designs for the Square Kilometre Array. The team, including Italians, Dutch, English and more, are battling the heat and harsh environment in the quest to build the most powerful radio telescope ever created.

Hear from the engineers and technical staff who have designed, tested and constructed these innovative radio antennas. Designed to collect faint radio signals from space, these ‘Christmas Trees’ have no moving parts and will connect together by the thousand to create an image of the sky at radio wavelengths.

The Aperture Array Verification System (AAVS1) is an extension to the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) Radio Telescope in Western Australia. It’s being used to help test and finalise the design of the low-frequency antennas for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be the world’s largest radio telescope when construction is complete later next decade.

Credit: ICRAR-Curtin University.