SKA Super telescope costs Skyrocket: Risk Management Failure

The estimated cost of the first construction phase of the world's largest radio telescope has jumped to 400 million euros ($530 million), the project's director general said Tuesday.

The increase of 50 million euros takes six years of accumulated inflation into account, and the figure could escalate further once additional costs of splitting the project between Africa and Australia are factored in.

This sudden and dramatic increase in the costings can only be attributed to poor financial risk management and a failure to complete a stringent risk assessment at the outset.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will be the world's largest and most sensitive radio telescope, with thousands of receptors spread over an area of a square kilometre (0.4 square miles).

Once completed, the project will allow astronomers to study distant galaxies in their quest to answer some fundamental questions about our Universe -- how it began, why it is expanding and whether it contains life beyond our planet.

The SKA will be able to detect a radio signal from a planet 50 light years away.

"What we are undergoing over the coming months is a review of how much Phase 1 will cost," Philip Diamond told AFP by phone from the English city of Manchester, where the SKA scheme is headquartered.

"What we are working towards is... presenting to the board at their July board meeting our informed estimates of the cost of the first phase of the SKA," he said.

"The board will then look at that, decide if they like it, and this will be part of the process then of going out to raise money from governments for the construction."

The project's original cost estimate, 1.5 billion euros in total for phases one and two, was made in 2007, and "we decided we should update the numbers to 2013 euros", said Diamond.