Meco helps Astron Exploring Space
Meco's Additive copper process used for SKA Telescope demonstrator

The Global radio astronomy community has for the last several years embarked on an exciting project known as Square Kilometer Array (SKA). This project is a radio telescope operational from 0.1 GHz to 25Ghz, with a square kilometer of overall collecting area, providing an increase in sensitivity of two orders of magnitude. To meet this wideband requirement, many national institutes have proposed various concepts.

ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, is coordinating a European endeavor to design and prototype the so called mid-SKA, ranging from 0.3-1GHz. The current design uses full metal aluminum plates as antennas, however since antenna costs are multiplied with millions, a very low cost manufacturing concept is required.

The Additive Copper process developed by MECO turned out to be very well suited for the production of SKA antennas with the combination of excellent performance and very low cost. A first foil based demonstrator has been built and tested with success.

Astron June 2008

Project partners: Astron , Meco, Stork Prints

www.astron.nl  / www.skatelescope.org