by All Africa
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Hosting the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is a big thing in the study of the universe and the successful country to host the CTA would attract global attention from physicists, astrophysicists, to astronomers and cosmologists. Not to mention the big budget that would be dedicated to the project. South Africa made the assurance this week during the Joint Bilateral Committee meeting, where Dr David Namwandi, Minister of Education and the South African Minister of Science and Technology, Naledi Pandor signed agreement for cooperation in the area of Astronomy and Space Science. The two countries already have a Framework of the Scientific and Technological Cooperation Agreement. “I would like to thank the Minister of Science and Technology of South Africa, for the overwhelming support that her government has given Namibia during the CTA bid process”, said Dr Namwandi. The CTA project is an initiative to build the next generation of ground-based, very high-energy gamma-ray instruments. It aims to use detection of high-energy gamma rays to provide a deeper insight into the high-energy Universe. By hosting the CTA, Namibia would play a crucial role in the exploration of the universe in depth in very high Energy gamma-rays and investigate cosmic non-thermal processes, in close cooperation with observatories operating at other wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum, and those using other messengers such as cosmic rays and neutrinos.
