Anyone out there?!

The Karoo, terrestrial setting for my first book The Housemaid's Daughter, is a vast semi desert stretching some 150 000 square miles across South Africa. Known for its wide open spaces and dramatic scenery - not to mention quaint, historic towns and villages - the Karoo is now becoming famous for what lies above it. The skies overhead this unique, remote area are particularly "radio quiet", and therefore the perfect place for astronomical observation.

It is here that a vast international project is taking shape, supported by 13 member nations and involving 100 organisations across the globe in the design and development phases. The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest radio telescope, with thousands of dishes and up to a million antennas spanning two continents. Intriguingly, it is possible to combine dishes and antennas in different continents to make up a "collecting" surface of a square kilometre, larger than any radio telescope currently in operation. The Karoo, already the site of the MeerKAT telescope, together with Western Australia's Murchison Shire are the co-hosts for this ambitious undertaking, bringing together some of the world's top scientists and engineers.

First observations are scheduled to take place in the mid 2020s. Astronomers will be able to probe the heavens in greater detail, and faster, than ever before.
From looking back at how the first stars and galaxies formed, to studying gravitational waves, pulsars, dark energy, the huge magnetic fields that sweep through the universe... to the great question of life beyond our own world.

Watch this space...