108MHz to 25.25GHz embargo for 100km Australian 'Radio Quiet Zone'

Western Australia now has a large Radio Quiet Zone, which is all in the good cause of science and furthering the knowledge of humankind, as Jim Linton VK3PC reports.

The Australian Communications Authority has issued a spectrum embargo under the Radiocommunications Act, to create a Radio Quiet Zone of 100 kilometres in radius to protect a proposed, new powerful radio telescope.

The SKA, or square kilometre array telescope is designed to collect astronomical information from the far reaches of space, probing the very beginning of the universe and maybe search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

The radio telescope would be made up of a cluster of 15-metre diameter parabolic dishes and have the world's most sensitive receivers.

A bid for the Aussie site to have an SKA as part of an international network of them, is now being finalised. A decision is due in 2006.

The proposal already has government and research institution support, the approval of the traditional land owners and the Mileura Station, a large remote cattle property 850 kms northwest of Perth, Western Australia.

Now that the has been declared by the ACA, it's full steam ahead for Australia's bid to play a key role in future radio telescope technologies.

Source: Wireless Institute of Australia

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