Development of the Dish Verification antenna-1 for the Square Kilometre Array

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) requires roughly 2000+ 15m reflector antennas to implement a radio telescope with a collecting area equivalent to 1 million square metres. The cost and performance of these antennas impact the telescope significantly. In this paper we report the results of developing the SKA Dish Verification Antenna-1 - a novel 15m dual offset Gregorian design using single-piece rim supported primary and secondary reflectors made of carbon reinforced plastic which yield cost and performance advantages.