Top international scientists have expressed shock at the suspension of a leading astronomer in South Africa this week. The fallout has raised fears that the country could lose its bid to host one of the largest science projects on Earth.

South Africa’s National Research Foundation (NRF) suspended Professor Phil Charles, director of the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO), on Monday, apparently because he discussed with other scientists optimal sites for the headquarters of the world’s biggest proposed radio telescope in prospect, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

South Africa and Australia are both bidding to host the R20-billion international SKA radio telescope project, which aims to construct a radio telescope with a collecting area of a million square metres.

The project will involve more than 34 institutions in 16 countries.

“Firing such a respected and trusted senior astronomer seems a pretty dim thing to do,” Andy Lawrence, professor of astronomy at the University of Edinburgh, wrote on his blog.

The online report of the authoritative science magazine, Nature, this week quoted several scientists’ outrage over Charles’s suspension.

Scientists now express fears that the embarrassing publicity could jeopardise South Africa’s bid to host the SKA project. But the NRF is playing down Charles’s link to the SKA.

“This matter is an internal matter between the NRF and one of its staff members at the SAAO and should thus not be improperly linked to the SKA bid,” said Patrick Thompson, group executive for human resources at the NRF.

Charles’s suspension “broadly relates to respect for protocol and the handling of work-in-progress sensitive information”, he said.

The astronomer is a key scientist in South Africa’s bid to host the SKA project and for the development of South Africa’s 80-dish MeerKAT (Karoo Array Telescope), which will serve as a forerunner to the SKA.

The trouble apparently started when Charles told peers that Observatory in Cape Town, near the city’s universities, is his preferred site for the headquarters of MeerKAT and the SKA.

Because South Africa would need a steady supply of scientists for the SKA, Charles and other scientists believe its operational headquarters should be near the universities.

The Mail & Guardian understands that the NRF’s preferred site is Ysterplaat, a South African Air Force base.

Five sites are up for discussion. These are presented in a document commissioned by the NRF and prepared by Professor Krish Bharuth-Ram, titled “A Decadal Strategy for Human Capacity Development in Astronomy and Astrophysics in South Africa”.

The paper was completed last August, but circulated only at the end of January. Scientists who spoke to the M&G called the document “controversial” and wondered why it was not circulated immediately. It will be presented next week at an NRF workshop, where the sites are expected to be discussed.

Scientists the M&G spoke to expressed disgust at Charles’s suspension, saying it manifests tensions between the administration of the NRF and scientists on the ground.

“What are we allowed to discuss and not discuss?” one scientist asked. “Science should be open, not hidden behind a veil of secrecy.”

But Thompson denied that there were any such tensions.

“As a knowledge organisation [such as the NRF], one should expect that there will always be debate and that the best ideas will prevail,” he said.

The row comes in the same week that President Jacob Zuma told the African Union in Ethiopia that the SKA could prove Africa’s leadership in science and innovation.

Charles, who holds the chair of astronomy at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, was headhunted by the NRF and moved to South Africa in 2004 on a five-year contract. The NRF renewed his contract last year until September 2011.

The NRF’s parent government body, the department of science and technology, has been quiet in the wake of the controversy, despite Minister Naledi Pandor’s insistence that South Africa’s ducks should be in a row when it comes to the SKA.

“Australia is a competent competing bidder and I have to keep my finger on the pulse with this project,” she said last weekend, before Charles’s suspension was announced.

The department did not respond to the M&G‘s questions.