Consortium pools Italian technical expertise

Impact
A newly formed consortium of Italian companies is combining decades of experience to manufacture a pivotal electromechanical component for the SKA-Mid telescope dishes in South Africa.

The feed indexer is a movable platform that holds the telescope’s instruments and ensures their precise alignment with its optics, thereby optimising performance.

Launched by Naples-based Società Aerospaziale Mediterranea (SAM), in partnership with Euro.Soft and SRS ED, the new startup/spin-off venture, SAM4SKA srl, has been contracted by the SKAO to deliver the components.

Founded in 1998, SAM is a prominent entity in the aerospace sector and has manufactured the feed indexers for the Observatory’s first four SKA-Mid dishes. The SKAO contract has facilitated a strategic expansion of its infrastructure and workforce.

The newly established company leverages the partners’ extensive experience on the SKA project, and as a result the team has significantly enhanced their technical and management capabilities, elevating the knowledge base within and among key subcontractors. In particular, they’ve relied on a network of at least 10 mostly Italian subcontractors specialising in mechanical processing and technological components.

A picture of the feed indexer for a SKA-Mid dish in a factory. The feed indexer is a roughly triangular structure with a spherical hole in the middle. The structure has three cylindrical and other components, all connected by black wires.
A feed indexer for SKA-Mid in the SAM factory. Credit: SAM

Big science projects like the SKA embody the most effective examples of collaborative integration between science, technology, and industry. They also make our work both compelling and unique in the pursuit of a dream.

Luigi IavaronePresident of SAM and SAM4SKA
Picture of the first SKA-Mid dish against a blue sky. The dish has a hexagonal shape and sits atop a white pedestal. A smaller spherical shaped mirror is supported by small white bars. A triangular structure, the feed indexer, is also mounted on these bars.
The first SKA-Mid dish with the feed indexer installed on site. Credit: SKAO

Throughout the project, the partners have developed cutting-edge tools and equipment for production and testing, leading to increased automation in several stages of the production process, as well as the development of spin-off technologies. One such example is an automatic test system for positioning and structural deformation analysis, which presents significant potential for future commercial applications.

As a result of their involvement, SAM and its consortium partners have also secured new collaborations, working on research projects funded by the Italian Ministry of Industry, and with German company OHB-DC and the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory on the MeerKAT+ project. This project will increase the capability of South Africa’s 64-dish MeerKAT telescope (which will ultimately form part of SKA-Mid) by adding up to 16 more dishes to the array.