A Year in the Life of the SKA

The building and operation of the SKA telescopes is a remarkable mission – and one that will fundamentally change the realm of global astronomy research. As construction and commissioning continue to gain momentum, the SKAO is preparing for the exciting transition to operations. To help guide the transition to this next phase, we have developed a detailed simulation: A Year in the Life of the SKA.

This document offers the community a first glance at the capabilities of the SKA telescopes in  steady-state operations. It represents a carefully constructed end-to-end simulation of how the telescopes could be used during a typical observing cycle, drawing on real science drivers, and expected capabilities. The majority of the simulation work is used to inform internal processes and this brief document summarizes content that might be relevant to the SKA users' community.

The document provides:

• A comprehensive overview of the capabilities of the SKA-Low and SKA-Mid telescopes during steady-state operations, including the different observing and tracking modes, Observatory Data Product (ODP) delivery, and the anticipated user interaction with the Observatory and the SRCNet. 
• This summary of the “year in the life” analysis, which the Science Operations team has carried out, informs various aspects of operations planning and provides crucial input for the ongoing development of SKA systems. This work simulated what a year would look like during steady-state operations and allowed us to understand the anticipated telescope and observing-mode usage, commensality between projects, sizes and distribution of ODP requests, SDP loads and data delivery rates to the SRCNet.

Feedback is welcome and should be directed to sciops@skao.int