Australia is playing a key role in the world’s biggest search for extra-terrestrial intelligen

Australia is playing a key role in the world’s biggest search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.

An Australian radio telescope in operation for more than 50 years will be one of the primary instruments used in a new $100m (A$137m; £64m) search for life elsewhere in space.

The 10-year project - known as the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) - was announced this week by Prof Stephen Hawking in London, and is being funded by Russian billionaire and venture capitalist Yuri Milner.

One of the two main radio telescopes being used in the search is a 64-metre-wide parabolic dish known as the Parkes telescope.

Operating since 1961, the Parkes telescope played an important role in televising the Apollo 11 moon landing.

“The Parkes telescope is one of the largest, fully steerable telescopes in the world,” says Prof Matthew Bailes, an astronomer at Swinburne University of Technology

Cosmologist Prof Stephen Hawking helped launch the latest search for alien life in space