Spain, a pioneer in the global network of SKA regional centers
27/02/2025 – The Spanish prototype of the SKA Regional Centre, under development by the IAA-CSIC, becomes the first centre to successfully complete its integration into SRCNet0.1, the first operational version of the international network that will constitute the scientific heart of the SKA Observatory (SKAO).
SKAO is an international organization building two state-of-the-art radio telescopes: SKA-Low in Australia, with over 130,000 dipole antennas for transmitting and receiving radio waves, and SKA-Mid in South Africa, with 197 parabolic antennas, each 15 meters in diameter. When the observatory's telescopes are operational, they will generate over 700 million gigabytes of data annually. All this data will be housed at SKA Regional Centres (SRCs), where it can also be accessed remotely. The various SRCs, distributed around the world, will be interconnected, forming a global network: SRCNet.
Last Monday, February 24, it was announced that the Spanish prototype of the SKA Regional Center, being developed at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), was the first to complete the deployment and integration of the services required to become part of SRCNet0.1. This initial operational version of the international network will be fundamental for the functioning of the SKA Observatory (SKAO).
The Spanish prototype of SRC, called espSRC, is one of 17 national initiatives contributing to the development of SRCNet. “We have been working on this project since 2019, demonstrating our firm commitment to the development of SRCNet as a collaborative platform. Being the first center to deploy the necessary services to become an SRCNet0.1 node is a result of this commitment and close collaboration with the other international groups involved,” says Susana Sánchez-Expósito, technical coordinator of espSRC at the IAA-CSIC. “We currently have a fully functional system that has served more than 30 scientific projects in different branches of astrophysics,” she adds. Isabel Márquez, scientific director of the Severo Ochoa program at the IAA-CSIC, also highlights: “It is this multidisciplinary approach that makes the SRC prototype one of the key pillars, and a cross-cutting element in our scientific strategy, funded by our Severo Ochoa excellence project. Having an infrastructure of this level at our center positions Andalusia and Spain within the international SKA collaboration.”
Members of the Spanish SKA team assembling the servers for the Spanish SRC Prototype (2020). Credit: IAA-CSIC
For her part, Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro, a researcher at the IAA-CSIC, coordinator of Spanish participation in SKAO, and head of the espSRC, emphasizes that “SKAO embraces sustainability and open science among its founding principles, and our prototype stands out as a benchmark for implementing both aspects within the SRCNet.” Open science is based on the principle of research reproducibility. According to UNESCO, this approach is increasingly recognized as a fundamental accelerator for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). To this end, it is essential that data, methods, and analytical tools be available to society. “SKAO will change the way science is done: it will no longer be possible to work locally on our computers, and the SRCs will constitute the scientific core of SKAO, providing an environment that fosters and facilitates collaboration between international teams following the principles of open science,” concludes Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro.