SHIJIAZHUANG, July 31 -- The first batch of China-built medium-frequency antennas of the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) were shipped to South Africa on Wednesday, marking a significant step for the construction of the world's largest radio telescope array.

The antennas were despatched from Shijiazhuang, the capital of north China's Hebei Province, to the SKA site in South Africa.

SKA is a network of thousands of radio antennas of varying types and sizes, located at several sites in Australia and Africa. The project is jointly funded, built and run by more than 10 countries. It will feature much higher sensitivity and survey speeds than any other radio instrument array developed so far.

Being one of the seven founding members of the international big science project and a signatory to the SKA Observatory Convention signed in 2019, China is responsible for the design, manufacturing, transportation, integration and commission of 64 SKA medium-frequency antenna sets. The delivery marks the beginning of the mass production phase of the antenna structure.

The completed array is expected to help humankind understand the origin of the universe and will contribute to research into the evolution of galaxies.