The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) projects underway in Western Australia to map the universe are forecast to generate data amounts in the region of eight petabytes each year.

The construction of the world’s largest radio telescope has moved a step closer, with the Australian government late last month calling for bids for design and engineering work for the €1.5 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Data processing rates of up to 4 gigabits per second will be realised next year when the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope correlator ramps up from February 2013.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is on the hunt for the petascale supercomputer that will underpin its Pawsey Centre, scheduled to be in place by 2014.

Australia’s bid for the $2.5 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) project has been bolstered by news that a state-of-the-art power plant will be built to supply its renewable energy.

An Australian developed algorithm has allowed researchers at the CSIRO to map -- for the first time -- Centaurus A, an enormous galaxy with a a supermassive black hole that is 50 million times the mass of our sun.