Recently, in order to further promote the implementation of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) in Xinjiang of China, Xinjiang Branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Karamay City jointly held the seminar to optimize the site selection scheme. Wu Xiangping, academician of the CAS, and more than 10 experts etc attended the meeting.

The SKA is the world's largest radio telescope array, with much higher sensitivity and survey speed than any other radio instrument so far developed. It's named after its total receiving area of about one square kilometer. As one of the founding members of the SKA project, China has participated in 6 out of 11 international work packages, including reflector antenna, low frequency aperture array, signal and data transmission, scientific data processing and intermediate frequency aperture array. Chinese scientists have also successfully developed the SKA's first antenna prototype and the first regional center prototype.

At the seminar, Wu Xiangping pointed out that the SKA project is highly concerned by President Xi Jinping, and the pre-research projects have been launched in batches in 2020 by the Ministry of science and technology of China. At the same time, the key technologies for SKA2 is also being actively promoted.

The experts visited the candidate sites and conducted in-depth discussion on the current site work, all concluding that the conditions of the two selected candidate sites are very suitable. It is agreed that if the SKA can be established in Xinjiang, it is bound to bring great impact on Xinjiang's high-quality development, scientific influence and international popularity.