MeerKAT: a project status report
L. R. S. Brederode, Lize Van den Heever, Willem Esterhuyse, Justin L. Jonas · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2016
The MeerKAT radio telescope is currently in full production in South Africa’s Karoo region, and by association, so is the Square Kilometre Array Phase 1 (SKA1) MID telescope. MeerKAT will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope array in the centimetre wavelength regime in the southern skies until the SKA1 MID telescope is operational, and is well on its way to realising the MeerKAT vision of being a world class instrument that exceeds its original specification. This paper identifies the key telescope specifications, discusses the high-level architecture and current progress to meet the specifications and lastly reports on lessons learnt in the process.