SKATE

The international SKA (Square Kilometre Array) project aims to match the resolution and sensitivity of the largest ground- and space-based observatories, and to cover the range from 50 MHz to at least 15 GHz. France’s position within SKAO (SKA Observatory, the intergovernmental organisation responsible for building and operating the SKA telescopes) has evolved considerably in recent years, and France is now becoming a fully-fledged player in this global project. Following the preliminary work of SKA-France (a national coordination led by the CNRS of industrial, technical and scientific activities in preparation for France’s participation in the SKA project), the French Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation (MESRI) announced France’s commitment to the SKA Observatory application process at the first meeting of the SKAO Council on 4 February 2021. In May 2021, a unanimous decision by the SKAO Council made France the first country to join the Observatory beyond its seven founding members (Australia, China, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa and the United Kingdom). The announcement of France’s accession to the SKA Observatory was made by the French President on 28 May 2021. The process of ratification of the accession by the parliament is currently underway.

Construction of the first phase of SKA began in July 2021, with two telescopes (SKA-mid and SKA-low) that will be operational around 2026-2027, but SKA’s "precursors" and "pathfinders" [1] of SKA are already operational and are being used by French scientists, among others. These include LOFAR (10–240 MHz), inaugurated in 2010, initially Dutch but then opened to European partners including France, and, at higher frequencies (900–1670 MHz), MeerKAT in South Africa. With NenuFAR, a 10-year national and regional effort, France has a very large low-frequency radio telescope, which is among the most powerful in the world in its frequency range, between 10 MHz and 85 MHz. NenuFAR is in the ‘Early Science’ phase until 30/11/2022, and the first Key Programmes, led by teams including French and foreign astronomers, have been active since July 2019.

SKA is an observatory whose scientific capabilities are of interest and relevance to a large part of the French astronomical community. Radio astronomy remains, however, a field requiring specific expertise, and SKA will be a very powerful observatory but complex to use in some of its observation modes. The SKA Regional Centres (SRCs) will play an essential role in providing access to SKA, serving as a portal for scientists to access the products of the Science Data Processors (SDPs). France is responsible for providing the high-performance computing platforms for the SDPs, whose role is to ingest raw data from the telescopes and produce reduced and calibrated data at the SRCs. For the SKA SDPs, a special effort to cross-adapt software and hardware platforms (‘co-design’) will be led by France.

The SKATE observation service aims to serve the French scientific community’s keen interest in SKA and to capitalise on the French community’s investments in SKA pathfinders by developing, within the same framework, the service tasks that prepare SKA and those that concern its precursors and pathfinders, mainly LOFAR and NenuFAR, while promoting synergies and highlighting cross-cutting tasks. SKATE provides a common framework for instrument development, community training and support, contributions to SDPs, and the development of software tools for exploiting SRC data. All these tasks constitute French contributions to SKAO and the SRCs.

SKATE’s service tasks are grouped into four categories and nine subcategories (each with the person(s) to contact if you have any questions):

• Organisational activities and management:
  – Governance of France’s contribution to LOFAR and SKA-France governance (contacts: Chiara Ferrari, Jean-Mathias Griessmeier).
• Station operations:
  – Operation and management of observation stations: FR606, NenuFAR and LOFAR (contacts: Julien Girard, Jean-Mathias Griessmeier, Philippe Zarka).
  – Provision of FR606 data in local mode and NenuFAR data (quality control, management of the Nançay Data Centre) (contacts: Baptiste Cecconi, Julien Girard).
• Instrumentation (including digital development):
  – Development of instrumentation for LOFAR 2.0, NenuFAR and SKA (receiver, antennas, electronics, etc.) (contact: Cédric Viou)
  – Hardware/software development and co-design activities, profiling (contact: Damien Chapon, Shan Mignot)
• Development of the FR-SRC (future AstroData):
  – User support and identification of needs for FR606, LOFAR, NenuFAR and other pathfinders, as well as definition of the support to be provided to SKA users (contact: Julien Girard, Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes, Marta Spinelli).
  – Integration into the SRC-Net (contact: Damien Chapon, Julien Girard, Chiara Ferrari, Jeff Wagg)
  – Development of French infrastructure: deployment of software stacks and methodological and algorithmic tools used by the community, integration of NenuFAR/LOFAR data processing, management and storage needs (contacts: Damien Chapon, Julien Girard, Shan Mignot, Cherry Ng, Cyril Tasse, Jeff Wagg)
  – Preparation for the release of SKA precursor and pathfinder data, in particular those with strong French participation LOFAR, NenuFAR (contacts: Baptiste Cecconi, Julien Girard, Jeff Wagg)

Documents

SKATE’s functional organisation chart

Contacts

National managers
Cyril Tasse (OBSPM) : cyril.tasse [at] observatoiredeparis.psl.eu
Gilles Theureau (OSUC) : gilles.theureau [at] cnrs-orleans.fr

Partner OSUs and local managers
OASU: Patrick Charlot (patrick.charlot [at] u-bordeaux.fr)
OCA: Marta Spinelli (marta.spinelli [at] oca.eu)
OSUPS: Mathieu Langer (mathieu.langer [at] universite-paris-saclay.fr)

Service task contacts
Baptiste Cecconi (baptiste.cecconi [at] obspm.fr)
Damien Chapon (Damien.Chapon [at] cea.fr)
Chiara Ferrari (chiara.ferrari [at] oca.eu)
Julien Girard (julien.girard [at] obspm.fr)
Jean-Mathias Griessmeier (Jean-Mathias.Griessmeier [at] obspm.fr)
Mathieu Langer (Mathieu.Langer [at] obspm.fr)
Shan Mignot (shan.mignot [at] oca.eu)
Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschênes (marc-antoine.miville-deschenes [at] cnrs.fr)
Cherry Ng (cherry.ng-guiheneuf [at] cnrs-orleans.fr)
Marta Spinelli (marta.spinelli [at] oca.eu)
Gilles Theureau (Gilles.Theureau [at] obspm.fr)
Cédric Viou (cedric.viou [at] obspm.fr)
Jeff Wagg (jeff.wagg [at] oca.eu)
Philippe Zarka (philippe.zarka [at] obspm.fr)