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© UMAN
On 5 and 6 Nov, the SKA
Mid Frequency Aperture Array (MFAA) consortium organised its second face-to-face FrontEnd Workpackage design review meeting (the first was a year ago at ASTRON, as part of the
MFAA all-hands meeting). We very much enjoyed our stay at the University of Manchester (the workpackage lead).
During the meeting, all three workpackage partners (KLAASA, UMAN, ASTRON) presented their progress, focussing mainly on the antenna and LNA designs. Additional material was presented by University of Cambridge, Observatoire de Nancay and Stellenbosch University.
In addition to all the technical fun, which included lively discussions among all engineers present, the SKA Office treated us to their latest view on SKA2 science goals.
David Zhang (UMAN), the LOC chair, summarized the meeting with an impressive list of the main achievements:
Current progress review of the overall front-end design task
Deliverable review for the Front-End task and MFAA as a whole
Clarify the work ahead for each front-end design task member
Whole differential front-end design is in a good prospect
Emerging technologies for AA
Principle discussions for consensus on technology selection
MFAA work towards PDR and beyond
Forecasting the Mid-frequency science goals
We are keenly looking forward to next year's face-to-face meeting at KLAASA, in China!
© UMAN