A Newcastle company has been making receivers for an almost complete $188 million state-of-the-art radio telescope for the CSIRO.
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The CSIRO board hosted Hunter business, government and community leaders at its Mayfield West site on Tuesday to highlight its work with electronics manufacturer Puzzle Precision and talk about opportunities for collaboration with the national science agency.
Puzzle Precision has been making parts for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP), a telescope being constructed in remote Western Australia, which will be used by astronomers from around the world to explore the universe.
Company director Sandra Coburn said it was "a wonderful opportunity" to work with CSIRO.
"Collaborating with CSIRO has helped us to grow our business, increase our local workforce and continue to improve the processes that are needed for advanced manufacturing," she said.
"We have worked alongside CSIRO to understand the requirements of the ASKAP circuit boards and have developed the production techniques needed to build 20,000 of them.
"This has opened new markets for us and being part of the ASKAP project has also brought work to the Hunter for other small businesses."
CSIRO chairman David Thodey said Newcastle was a growing part of the science agency's efforts to solve challenges facing the nation.
"We're very proud of the breakthroughs made at Newcastle's energy centre, including work being done now to integrate renewables into the grid, store their power in next-generation batteries and use big data to better understand the needs of the grid. But our energy centre is just the front door to the whole of the national science agency, from energy to space, manufacturing to agriculture, and many others," he said.
"It's great to see partnerships with local businesses like Puzzle Precision show how world-class engineering and research in areas like astronomy and space science can be turned into real-world impact when we work with local businesses and grow our national space industry."
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