Construction of the CSIRO's ground-breaking, 36-dish Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, about 315km northeast of Geraldton, is now complete.

The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder is expected to discover in its early stages - using just 36 dishes - more than 700,000 new supergalaxies, CSIRO says.

radio-astronomy instruments on the planet.

They are the precursor to the international Square Kilometre Array project that Australia will host with South Africa and New Zealand.

CSIRO chief executive Megan Clark said ASKAP would pick up radio signals sent before the earth existed.

It will provide an insight into the very beginnings of the universe and help answer some of the most fundamental questions of 21st century astronomy and physics involving dark matter, dark energy, the nature of gravity, the origins of first stars and galaxies, and the generation of magnetic fields in space.

Ms Clark said the amount of data to be captured and moved was mind-boggling.

In the first few weeks of this facility (being) up and running, the amount of data that will move from here through Geraldton and down to Perth, is more than currently exists in all of radioastronomy around the world, she told reporters on site.

And very soon we will have enough data that will really be more than what we see on the internet today.

Science and Research Minister Chris Evans, who attended the launch on Friday, said the ASKAP was an important science project in its own right, but would also provide the basis for Australia's contribution to the broader $2.5 billion SKA project, jointly hosted with South Africa and New Zealand.

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SKA Pathfinder telescope launched in WA