ALMA MONTHLY REPORT March 2013

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 2

2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT........................................................................................ 2

3. EAST ASIAN EXECUTIVE ........................................................................................ 7

4. EUROPEAN EXECUTIVE .......................................................................................... 9

5. NORTH AMERICAN EXECUTIVE ........................................................................... 12

6. SITE ......................................................................................................................... 15

7. SYSTEM ENGINEERING ......................................................................................... 16

8. SCIENCE IPT ........................................................................................................... 17

9. INTEGRATED COMPUTING TEAM (ICT) ............................................................... 19

10. SCIENCE OPERATIONS ......................................................................................... 20

11. ALMA DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING (ADE) ................................................... 22

12. ALMA DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING (ADC) ...................................................... 27

13. ADMINISTRATION .................................................................................................. 28

14. HUMAN RESOURCES ............................................................................................ 28

15. EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH ................................................................ 30

16. SAFETY ................................................................................................................... 32

17. LIST OF COMMONLY USED ACRONYMS ............................................................. 33

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1. INTRODUCTION This report highlights activities and major developments during March 2013. During this month all Atacama Compact Array (ACA), central cluster and inner array stations were completed and the number of delivered antennas reached 57. Bands 4, 8 and 10 made steady progress, as did the European (EU) antennas. All EU front end (FE) production units were delivered to ALMA and the FE integration center at RAL was decommissioned. Band 5 cartridge production and the band 5 local oscillator also advanced. Investigation of the Vertex surface deformations and work on the nutator continued. All North American (NA) FEs have been provisionally accepted, and the ALMA phasing project is building up.

In March, efforts started to focus on system robustness and testing given that commissioning and science verification (CSV), the Integrated Computing Team (ICT) and Engineering have been given priority in the next months to work on commissioning of cycle 1 capabilities.

Last but not least, making the inauguration a success required the attention of everyone at the observatory.

March was the last month of T. de Graauw as ALMA director and L. Ball as deputy director. The whole partnership thanked them for their dedicated and hard work in bringing the observatory to this stage.

2. PROJECT MANAGEMENT 2.1. Management IPT and IPT Meetings Operation Readiness Review

During the ALMA Board meeting in March, it was decided that the charge to the AAER 2013 regarding the operation readiness review (ORR) of the observatory will be re-assessed; the meeting date will be announced after mid May. Efforts to organize preparations in the JAO were set in motion and input is awaited. There was a gradual step-up of coordination to decrease IPT activities and to begin maintenance support and development activities in each Executive. Discussions on operation items have been included in the IPT managers’ meeting.

OSF Laboratory Coordination

FE test measurement systems (FETMS) both from the NA FE integration center (FEIC) and East-Asian (EA) FEIC arrived at the OSF in early January, and were installed successfully during that month. Reports for both FETMS have been available since the end of March; the JAO started organizing the ORR for those two systems.

Status of Correlators

After the successful provisional acceptance on-site (PAS) test of the 64 Correlator (BLC) in December 2012 and of the ACA correlator in November 2011, those correlators have been tested over the past months by the CSV and Computing teams, to establish cycle 1 capabilities. Several issues have been identified and are being addressed. An effort is underway to demonstrate 64 antenna capabilities with the BLC, by increasing the connected antenna elements to 46; collaborative activities have been led by the correlator, computing and CSV teams.

2.2. Budget Status

The first table represents the position from the bilateral agreement. The second table shows the ALMA-J contribution, and finally the third table shows the project management control system (PMCS) change requests (CRs) that have been implemented during the month.

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Construction budget summary March 2013 – In Process section updated on April 11th.

ALMA-J Contributions in Construction March 2013

The tables above include the cost-to-complete CRs updated as of April 11th.The following set of CRs has been implemented during March 2013:

Construction Budget + Commitment Summary ALMA Actuals as of February 2013 (M Y2000$) Approved Bilateral Budget 528.9 446.9 772.5 ARemaining Contingency + Reserve 8.6 5.3 9.6 BTOTAL Available Budget (bilateral, no-ALMA-J, no G&S)

537.5 452.2 782.1C=A+B

Actual Cost 533.3 410.0 745.2 DUnpaid Commitments 3.0 31.1 28.1 EActual Cost + Unpaid Commitments 536.3 441.1 773.3 F=D+ETotal Remaining Available Budget 1.2 11.1 8.8 I=C-F

Budget Changes in Process 8.1 2.8 8.4 KNA BCRs 3.9 0.0 2.9

EU BCRs 0.0 4.4 3.7

JAO BCRs 4.2 -1.6 1.8

Forecast Remaining Contingency + Reserve

0.5 2.5 1.2M=B-K

Risk Register Probability-Weighted Cost Risk (Risk Register V24-All 2013.02.22)

1.3 2.4 3.0

P:\PMCS_JAO\Cobra Backups\EVMS Report\EVMSformat\[EV_spreadsheet_Feb2013-2013Apr11.xlsm]MTsSummary

NA (M$) EU (M€)

Approved

In-process

NA (M$) EU (M€) Site and Site Integration Contribution 17.7 16.7LSM Reimbursement 5.4 -

Site and Site Integration Contribution (in process)

0.0 -0.1

LSM Reimbursement (in process) -0.2 -

Site and Site Integration (received) 14.4 15.4LSM Reimbursement (received) 3.7 -Open Commitments (received) 0.6 0.0

Al

ma-J

P:\PMCS_JAO\Cobra Backups\EVMS Report\EVMSformat\[EV_spreadsheet_Feb2013-2013Apr11.xlsm]MTsSummary

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PMCS CR # Description Exec Comments

7.0528 Closure of the NA Computing IPT Accounts - Part 1

NRAO Added 2012-Nov-30. -$7K Y2K, -$400K TYD. Implemented 2013-Mar-28.

8.0622 JAO 375.3015 (NA) - Vehicles and IG equipment reprofile

NRAO Added 2012-Jun-01. +$70K Y2K, +$186K TYD. Implemented 2013-Apr-02.

8.0623 JAO 375.3015 (EU) - Vehicles and IG equipment reprofile

EU Added 2012-Jun-01. -$119K Y2K, -142K Y2012€. Implemented 2013-Apr-02.

2.0626 OSF IG Lab to T10 connection 025.0240 (EU) Shared

EU Added 2013-Mar-01. +$65K Y2K, +82K Y2012€. Implemented 2013-Apr-01.

PMCS CRs implemented during March and early April 2013

2.3. Schedule Status as of March 31st, 2013 Key schedule topics of the month are:

• AOS - Infrastructure:

o Antenna Stations: All ACA, central cluster and inner array stations are complete (foundations, transporter access, ridges, utilities capability). The remaining stations belong to the Y-array and the utilities are expected to be complete by late April 2013.

o Power Distribution: Turbines 1 and 2 are in maintenance, turbine 3 is in service. The permanent power supply (PPS) is powering the OSF and the AOS-technical building (TB), while the AOS antennas are being transitioned from the temporary power system (TPS) generators to the PPS. Branches 1, 2, 3 and 4 are in working process, and gradual connection is expected during April. The safest and most science- and cost-efficient way to establish the 2013 power system is being analyzed. This is being done in conjunction with the required repairs of the OSF-AOS road and the 23KV cable.

- Antennas in the Array: o A total of 57 antennas have been delivered, with 54 at the AOS, and three in

maintenance.

• OSF - Antennas: antenna CM11, DA58 and DA62 are in assembly, integration and

verification (AIV) processing.

The following diagrams show the ALMA general overview of the current and the previous month, and the same for next two diagrams with more details of 2012 and 2013.

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Current Month

Previous Month

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Current Month

Previous Month

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3. EAST ASIAN EXECUTIVE 3.1. Management The East Asian (EA) project manager performed regular reviews of the schedules of the antennas and the band 4/8/10 cartridges.

The Astronomical Society of Japan’s (ASoJ) 2013 spring meeting was held from March 20th through 23rd. A special presentation on ALMA was given on March 22nd, attracting a large audience.

The EA ALMA regional center (ARC) review was held from March 4th through March 6th, charged by the NAOJ Radio Astronomy Advisory Committee.

3.2. ACA Antennas The maintainability review meeting was held on March 21st to discuss the status of the ACA antennas and deliverable documents related to the maintenance. With the review documents and NAOJ’s answers to 98 submitted review item discrepancies, the review panel agreed that the ACA antennas are acceptable, on condition of closing the action items raised at the meeting.

3.2.1 ACA 12m antennas:

PM01, 02, and 04 have been used for CSV and early science activities at the AOS. PM03, which had stayed at the OSF-TF for the ALMA inauguration, was relocated to the AOS on March 15th.

Regarding the remaining actions over the azimuth and elevation oscillations during the OTF (On-the-Fly), MELCO conducted additional tests with PM03 at the AOS to verify the “stable trajectory” for the quick turning motion. After MELCO’s tests, the JAO conducted a more extensive OTF test, which confirmed significant improvement, but found some unsuccessful cases remaining. MELCO is trying to complete the action. 3.2.2 ACA 7m antennas:

Eleven ACA 7m antennas –all except for CM11- are located at the AOS. CM11 has been used for AIV at the OSF and also for the ALMA inauguration. CM11 is in its final phase of AIV and due to relocate to AOS soon.

The heating, ventilating, air conditioning (HVAC) failure in CM09 on February 5th, during which the receiver cabin temperature increased to over 30ºC, was likely caused by an abnormal behavior of the coolant flow-meter readout. NAOJ replaced the flow-meter readout device on March 4th.

3.3. EA Front End 3.3.1 EA Front End Integration Center:

EA FEs from #1 to #17 are contributed by EA, #18 to #22 by NA, #23 to #26 by EU. All EA FEs are delivered. The installation of a testing line in Chile was complete on March 3rd. The review meeting was held on March 4th.

3.3.2 Band 4/8/10 Cartridges:

Band 4 cold cartridge assembly (CCA4): To date, 30 CCA4 cartridges, out of a total of 73 , have been delivered. This month’s progress is as follows:

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PAS review report in preparation S/N 22, 26, 28 PAS test report submitted S/N 27, 32 Arrived at the OSF None In transit to the OSF S/N16, 33, 36, 39, 42 (to arrive on April 17th) To be shipped to the OSF None To be authorized to be shipped None Preliminary Acceptance In-house (PAI) review report in preparation

None

PAI test report in review S/N 35, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 51, 52 Ready for PAI test None

Band 8 Cold Cartridge Assembly (CCA8): To date, 51 CCA8 cartridges, out of a total of 73 , have been delivered. This month’s progress is as follows:

PAS review report in preparation S/N 27, 28, 30, 32 PAS test report submitted S/N 10, 28, 05 Arrived at the OSF None In transit to the OSF S/N 52, 02, 22, 54, 55, 58, 60 17

(to arrive on Apr. 17) To be shipped to the OSF None To be authorized to be shipped None PAI review report in preparation S/N 56 PAI test report in review S/N 59

Band 10 Cold Cartridge Assembly (CCA10): To date, 31 CCA10 cartridges, out of a total of 73 cartridges, have been delivered. This month’s progress is as follows:

PAS review report in preparation None PAS test report submitted S/N 09, 10, 11, 12 Arrived at the OSF S/N 27, 29, 31 In transit to the OSF None To be shipped to the OSF None To be authorized to be shipped None PAI review report in preparation None PAI test report in review S/N 35, 43, 44, 46, 50

Summary Status is as follows:

PAI Review Completed Delivery Completed

Band 4 Cartridge Assembly 37 30

Band 8 Cartridge Assembly 57 51

Band 10 Cartridge Assembly 31 31

3.4. New Development Projects 3.4.1 Band 1 Cartridge:

The cartridge mechanical model is being built up. Various components are being collected for the integration and the performance verification. The specification review of the ALMA band 1 has been planned to take place before its preliminary design review, according to the suggestion of the ALMA Development Steering Committee.

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4. EUROPEAN EXECUTIVE 4.1. Management The ALMA inauguration at the OSF was attended by many ESO-ALMA staff, and an inauguration event was organized and held at ESO Garching as well.

The 19th AEM antenna has been delivered to ALMA.

All production deliverables of FEs, back ends (BEs), and correlator are complete.

The EU Project Office and EU Site IPT continued its work on various site related topics. Details are given in the Site section. Main activities included: (1) A work visit to the ADE power team at the OSF; (2) Review of previous ALMA residence design changes and preparation of the call for tender for the ALMA residence; (3) Contacts with the Chilean ministry of public works (MOP) concerning the intersection with public highway CH23; and (4) PPS related work.

At the beginning of March, a meeting was held at ESO between representatives of the ALMA phasing project (APP) and ESO-ALMA to discuss aspects of this project.

ALMA progress was presented at the ESO-wide overview, a yearly event of three half days involving all ESO staff in Europe and Chile and addressing all of ESO’s activities.

4.2. EU Antennas and transporter AOS/OSF status and progress Accepted antennas

In March it was possible to complete antenna #19 (DA62) and transfer it to ALMA. The transfer took place the week of the inauguration. The antenna was removed from the AEM area in presence of external visitors and finally displayed with the transporter during the visit of the inauguration guests.

Antenna DA57 was brought to the high site on March 8th. The commissioning of DA58 by AIV did not advance in March as expected due to the unavailability of the holography receiver, needed for other AIV tasks.

Antenna DA41 (the first European antenna) was brought down from the AOS to the OSF at the request of ESO on March 26th, in order to undergo a detailed joint inspection with AEM, and to verify its status prior to the expiry of the 2-year warranty in April. This also allowed performing the upgrade of the thermal control design in the calibration volume, which was finalized when the antenna was already at the AOS. At the time of writing, a holography campaign has been performed, showing that the change in the surface has been minor, in line with the specification regarding surface stability.

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Figure 1- DA57 arriving at the AOS on March 8th

The investigation of problems experienced in some AEM antennas with the HVAC and braking systems continued. The problems are understood, but not all corrective actions have been implemented yet, despite corrections having been initiated. This includes rerouting of some power cables producing electromagnetic interference with the control programmable logic controller. In the case of the brakes, it has been decided to exchange one standard component (pressure switch) with a similar unit from another brand, after one million qualification cycles were completed at the manufacturer. The parts are in procurement by AEM.

AEM Work Area Antennas

In the course of March major progress was achieved on antenna s/n 23 (DA63), which at the end of March was close to beginning its acceptance testing. No decision was taken yet about the acceptance review of antenna DA61, which completed its acceptance cycle in February; it has not yet been presented for acceptance due to an accident in February in which the back-up structure (BUS) was damaged, and a minor hysteresis in elevation resulted, not affecting the specification. The repair was finalized at the end of March. The hysteresis problem is under investigation by AEM on antennas s/n 19 (DA59) and s/n 20 (DA60), in which the effect is larger and poses a risk to the fulfilment of the pointing specification. The Antenna IPT (AIPT) expects to have a comprehensive report and plan for corrective actions before the end of April.

Antenna DA64 is in commissioning and it is fully nominal. Its testing is expected to begin at the end of April, when one optical pointing telescope (OPT) will be available. The two prototype OPTs did not suffer downtime in March, but one of the two (OPT1) shows optical coma and needs optical realignment at the time of writing. Further, the frequent power cuts at the OSF caused some headache with the mini racks equipment used to collect the pointing data, and some nights were lost. It has been decided to power certain items directly with the UPS of the antenna.

In March reflector #25 was completed and assembled on the antenna. With this all antennas have been mechanically integrated.

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Figure 2 - Assembly of the reflector of antenna #25 in March 2013.

Open Points / Reservations

The work to close the reservations linked to the delivered antennas is continuing. There are no reservations on any performance aspect of the delivered antennas and hence, apart from some open remaining works, only minor documentation issues are left. The new versions of the operating and maintenance manuals for the AEM antennas were delivered by the contractor, checked by ESO and transferred to ALMA. The issue of the updated spare part list with the manufacturer address is still open, but in progress at AEM.

The new version of the antenna control unit software (release 1.5.0) was received in February and, after internal checking by the AIPT, it was installed in March on all antennas.

Since the signature of contract amendment #13 in November 2012, covering warranty aspects, AEM is intervening at the AOS without request for reimbursement. Spares procurement is ongoing, and a first batch of parts was delivered in March at the OSF. The electronic spares are still in procurement and their delivery was announced for June 2013.

The AIPT keeps supporting the ALMA antenna group on various aspects of maintenance of the antennas, helping to shape and supporting the decision on maintenance policy to be taken by the JAO. Europe progress

Support from the technical teams in Europe is continuing as needed on warranty aspects and on the pointing deficiency of antennas DA59 and DA60, presently on hold at AEM.

Ridges, I/F plates, and others.

Nothing is pending. Work has been completed, and the spares have been provided to ALMA.

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Transporters

Both machines are in regular operation, after the intervention of December 2012.

4.3. EU Front End As reported last month, all EU FE production units have been delivered to ALMA. Remaining EU FE IPT construction project activities are focused on closing out remaining commitments. In March this was mainly related to the delivery of the remaining spare parts for bands 7 and 9 cartridges. Both cartridge groups made good progress in preparing the necessary acceptance documentation.

Another major activity this month in closing out EU FE production was the decommissioning of the EU FEIC at RAL (UK). By the end of March, as scheduled, all equipment and tools had been packed, some were already on their way to the OSF, while transport for the remaining goods to ESO Garching had been arranged.

Band 5 cartridge production, the first ALMA development project which is funded by the ESO-ALMA operations budget, has been making good progress since the kick-off meeting on February 1st. The highest priority for the band 5 consortium is building a first production-like band 5 cartridge, that will be used for verification of the adapted (series production optimized) design. At the end of March the NOVA group had completely updated the mechanical design and all components for the verification cartridge had been ordered. The GARD group had minor delays in preparing the set of 2SB mixers for delivery to NOVA in April, but this was not expected to affect the assembly process.

The process for procurement of band 5 production components has started with the support from an external company.

A telecon meeting with NRAO on the status and further improvement of the band 5 Warm Cartridge Assembly (WCA) / Local Oscillator (LO) was held on March 12th. New components suggested by NRAO to further improve WCA/LO performance have been delivered to GARD for testing.

4.4 Back End and Correlator With the completion of production deliverables, the attention is focused on maintenance aspects; in March particular attention was on digitizer and correlator tunable filter bank (TFB) cards off-site maintenance.

Despite the large number of digitizer modules and correlator TFB cards at the ALMA site, very few hardware failures have been identified. 'Tier 3' maintenance requiring component repair in Europe was needed in one of the two channels of three digitizers. 'Tier 3' repair was also required for 4 TFB cards, possibly because of the impact of high energy CR particles at the AOS. To facilitate long term operation of the TFB cards it was decided to produce 16 additional TFB cards in addition to the existing spares.

5. NORTH AMERICAN EXECUTIVE 5.1. Management A safety review of the 23KV cable will be conducted in late April. The charges for the review were written and agreed by the project managers.

Statements of work and a memorandum of negotiation were written for the contract to install the fuse disconnects at the AOS. They are being reviewed by AUI and NSF.

Eric Bryerton was appointed as the manager for ALMA-NA offsite hardware maintenance.

The change control board (CCB) has been meeting on about a weekly basis to review requests for waiver and engineering change requests to reduce backlog.

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Memoranda for balancing 2012 construction costs for CSV, AIV, and the JAO between EU and NA were written and agreed.

5.2. NA Construction Activities 5.2.1 Antenna -Antenna surface deformations. Investigations into the surface deformations of the Vertex antennas continue. Closure has been reached on seven of the identified action items at the December 2012 face-to-face meeting on the surface deformation problem. One remaining item of particular interest is the identification of a potential link between changes in the coefficient of thermal expansion of the BUS and BUS pressure differentials. Continued study of this issue involves conducting astro-holography measurements of the antennas at the AOS, which will occur over the coming months.

-Tiltmeters. The manufacturer of the antenna tiltmeters, Applied Geomechanics, was purchased by another company, Jewell Instrument. The company is retrofitting the last two tiltmeters for the methanol-based electrolyte. To complete the tiltmeter upgrade on all Vertex antennas, the JAO antenna group, Vertex, and the NA AIPT agreed to install two spare tiltmeters in DV01 and DV10 while the retrofit of the last two units is underway. Those units will then be returned to the JAO as spares.

-Nutators. The factory acceptance and site acceptance test reports for the first nutator were delivered in February, and its acceptance review (ACRV) is scheduled for April 9th. The fabrication and assembly of the four remaining units continues in Taiwan. The factory acceptance testing of the second and third units has been tentatively scheduled for the week of May 6th.

-Optical Pointing Telescopes. All six OPTs are at the OSF. On-antenna tests of the sixth unit were completed in early April. The ACRV reviews for the OPTs will commence following the successful completion of the ACRV for the first nutator. 5.2.2 Front End FE Assemblies. All of the NA FE assemblies have been provisionally accepted, and the current focus is on working with the ALMA product assurance (PA) team on closing out any remaining open action items that might stand in the way of achieving formal full acceptance of all delivered FEs. The members of the materials review board agreed to convert two of the three remaining corrective action requests (CARs) to simple non-compliance reports (NCRs). The NA FE IPT has submitted a request for waiver (RfW) with respect to one of these two non-compliances to seek approval from the CCB. The other non-compliance requires out-of-scope modifications to the hardware to resolve, and the NA FE IPT will seek approval to accept the construction phase hardware as-is. The third CAR already has a resolution, and is in the process of being converted to a regular work/action item by the PA group.

Following up on the example “status list” for a FE assembly that was reported last month, the NA FE IPT has produced a status list for each NA FE assembly, to facilitate the process of obtaining the final acceptance certificates for the delivered hardware. The lists summarize the closure status of applicable action items from PAI and PAS meetings, as well as any applicable NCR, RfW, or CAR requests. The lists also summarize the availability of acceptance documentation and minutes of the applicable acceptance meetings. A satisfactory status for all FE assemblies should conclude the NA FE IPT’s responsibility for FEs with respect to the construction phase.

FE Test Systems.

The qualification testing of the NA FETMS was successfully completed at the OSF. The draft FETMS test report is posted on ALMA EDM. The equipment is ready for its operational readiness review and handover to the JAO.

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The Siemens software to auto-tune the tilt table proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller has been received. This software will help fix issues with tilt table oscillations.

The test report for the band 6 cartridge test set (CTS) is partially written. Its completion awaits the resolution of gain spikes observed during qualification testing. Additional data are being taken using a replacement band 6 CCA that was shipped from the band 6 cartridge group to the OSF. The OSF is also returning the band 6 CCA that was previously used for CTS testing. That CCA will be checked for gain spikes using the cartridge group’s CTS in NA.

WCAs and LO Multipliers. The FE LO group is concentrating on producing the band 10 WCAs. So far, 21 band 10 WCAs have been delivered to the OSF, 13 more have passed PAI testing, and eight more are undergoing qualification tests. The deliveries of FELO cryogenic multipliers for band 10 are nearly complete. The final batch consists of 16 band 10 multipliers (this includes the project spares for the operations phase). They have successfully completed qualification tests and are being reviewed by PA for authorization to ship 27 band 4 multipliers and six band 8 multipliers are still required to complete the cartridge construction work. Project spares for the operations phase would be in addition to this.

FE Thermal Interlock Modules (FETIMs). The testing of one FETIM continues at the NRAO Technology Center (NTC). Once the test is successfully completed, the unit will be forwarded to the OSF for integration in a FE assembly for subsequent qualification testing. Once its operation is confirmed, the remaining production quantity of FETIMs will be kitted and shipped to the OSF. The process of making known necessary modifications to the hardware and kitting them has already begun. The shipments are currently scheduled to be completed in May 2013.

Front End Handling Vehicle (FEHV). The delta critical design review (CDR) for the FEHV was successfully completed on March 18th. 5.2.3 Backend NA BE staff worked with JAO system engineering (SE) to close action items from the acceptance review of the central local oscillator article (CLOA), to include calibration requirements and laser synthesizer switching.

The final closeout of the NA BE accounts in the construction budget is underway.

5.2.4 Correlator Some outstanding documentation from the correlator acceptance review will be delivered in June after the CDR for the ALMA phasing project is complete. 5.3. NA Off-site Maintenance 5.3.1 Front End Maintenance Tiered Maintenance. Two repaired band 6 cartridges were delivered to the OSF in March. Another cartridge was repaired, passed its PAI review, and was shipped on March 25th. Two additional cartridges are at various stages of test and repair at the NRAO-NTC. Four more band 6 cartridges with known failures await shipment back from the OSF to the NRAO-NTC.

Cartridge Bias Module Test Set. The bias module test set was shipped from Green Bank and is now at the NRAO-NTC. 5.3.2 Backend Maintenance Training. Staff from the NA BE IPT will conduct training sessions for JAO staff at the OSF in mid-May. Training topics include periodic maintenance procedures for BE line replaceable

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units (LRUs), maintenance and operations of the CLOA, master laser operations, antenna article firmware and maintenance, and BE test stand operations.

Spares. Complete kits for six spare LO photonic receiver modules were shipped to the vendor for assembly. The master laser distribution spare was tested after repair and returned to the OSF. Insulation tubing for the optical fiber cable was sent to the AIV group for the remaining antennas as well as for future repair and maintenance stock.

Maintenance. The graphical user interface (GUI) for logging information from the central variable reference microwave synthesizer was upgraded. Some troubleshooting of the test set for the fiber optic wrap was performed.

Tests of the Allan variance stability of the central reference generator were conducted at MIT-Haystack to resolve outstanding questions related to the central LO stability for the APP. 5.4. NA Development 5.4.1 Development Projects Summary The status of the three development projects supported by NA is summarized below. Band 5 Local Oscillator (NRAO). A driver power amplifier with larger output power and a new doubler with an integrated low pass filter were sent to GARD to suppress the excess noise and harmonics that have been observed in the LO. These components are being integrated into the prototype LO now. The design of the band 5 LO will be finalized once tests confirm that the modifications have addressed the performance issues. The test results are expected by mid-April. The critical design and manufacturing readiness review has been postponed until no sooner than the end of April.

OSF-Calama optical fiber (JAO/NRAO).The procurement of the optical fiber is complete. The fiber was delivered to the port of Antofagasta. The final sign-off of the construction contracts is in process.

ALMA Phasing (MIT-Haystack). The detailed estimate of JAO implementation (non-recurring) costs is complete. The estimates are under review by JAO senior management. The NRAO and JAO have agreed upon a labor cost charging protocol for the project. NRAO cost accounts have been established. The loading of budget into those accounts will be performed in April.

The maser subsystem design is 95% complete. The final details of the design (seismic analysis and packaging) were determined during tests at MIT-Haystack. The correlator team received the phasing interface cards, and preparations for board-level assembly operations are underway. The CDR for the project will be held at the NRAO in Charlottesville on May 22nd-23rd. 5.4.2. NA Development Studies Summary Preparations for the ALMA-NA Development Workshop on April 18th are underway. Preparations for the May 1st call for study proposals and the June 3rd call for project proposals are 75% complete.

6. SITE 6.1. JAO The low voltage (400V) cables between the transformers and antenna stations for a number of locations within the inner array have not been installed in accordance with the design. A proposed fix involves a revision to the cable-grounding scheme that makes the installation code-compliant and will allow CSV testing and science to proceed. This may not be

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acceptable however to all of the parties and a management review board will be held to help define the way forward.

6.2. ESO ALMA Residence All disciplines have been reviewed and the requested changes have been implemented. Still outstanding is the lightning protection that required further comments, now under contractor’s evaluation.

The documentation for the call for tenders was developed and is now under review by ESO management.

Roads Still no decision has been reached by the Santiago Court of Appeal about the request for annulment of the arbitration tribunal award by the contractor that paved the road.

The execution of the intersection with public highway CH23 by/on behalf of the MOP is still pending. After assessment of the “fair” cost by a consultant, contacts are ongoing to devise the way forward trying to find an agreement with the MOP.

Power Some workmanship issues in the fuel piping have been identified by an external expert and notified to the contractor, to be fixed within the warranty.

The installation of the safety/security fencing around the power facility has progressed with the construction of the foundations for the poles.

A survey of the current situation of the underground cable installation affected by the Altiplanic winter by the Executive/JAO safety managers has been planned for April to assess the level of risk and the implementation of adequate procedures.

6.3. AUI/NRAO Progress during March 2013 was 2.2%, reaching a total progress of 98.7% for this project. This encompasses total progress, including previous work done by other contractors. The partial progress in this month has increased significantly, even though Agua Santa subcontractors have been on site part of the time only. Agua Santa is working mainly in the trenching and cabling of the western arm and still completing issues in the Inner Array found by PA and remaining work in the southern arm with antenna stations. Branches 3 and 4 are scheduled to be powered up in April, with a temporary protection scheme to allow the start of CSV in the longer baselines for cycle 1 of science. On our side, the pads associated to science needs in cycle 1 are complete, except for those depending on the JAO returning the loaned switchgear (number 4). That will happen as soon as the PPS is connected, scheduled for April and the return of switchgear 4 by the JAO. The contractor continues civil work, completing trenches and road crossings in the western arm of the extended array. The work in that area, including trenching and electrical and fiber optics work in laying those cables continues, and the completion date of that part of the array will happen in April - May, date to be determined.

7. SYSTEM ENGINEERING JAO SE continued the investigation of a design change for the power distribution to the antenna stations, especially focusing on the grounding of the antenna foundations and power vaults.

The action items for PAI and PAS FE Assembly was reviewed. SE is reviewing FETMS system PAS reports of both from NA and EA installed in the OSF. The ORR of the FETMS will be held by mid May (new date). Finalization of the PAS of cryo enclosures of ACA antennas is progressing, though the PA inspection reports are still pending.

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The delta CDR of the FEHV was held on March 19th and manufacturing will begin in April 2013. SE has supported the delivery of the FETIM to the OSF and the preparation of the PAI/PAS process. Open action items for CLOA from the ACRV are being closed (i.e. configuration item data list - new revision, review of maintenance manuals and calibration issues). Laser synthesizer requirements for fast switching locking are awaiting feedback from Science.

Preparation is ongoing for the ACRV of the first nutator (S/N2) in Chile, which will be held on April 9th. The ACRV of DA62 was held in mid-March, and special arrangements for the ALMA Inauguration ceremony were made for demonstration purposes. The maintainability review for the ACA antennas was held on March 21st (new date).

The system verification team in the SCO has grown by one person: Seiji Kameno (NAOJ) started working with the team at the beginning of March. The verification of system technical requirements continues, in particular in the areas of band-pass stability, polarization, aperture efficiency and database of spurious signals. Three system verification reports have been issued this month.

The acceptance status as of the end of March 2013 is as follows:

8. SCIENCE IPT 8.1 Commissioning and Science Verification March was a dynamic month for CSV. Given the scope and number of new features introduced to the software in the last five months, it is not surprising that an unstable situation currently exists. The handover time extended to more than six hours on some occasions, and problems with various subsystems were encountered, some of which had extended back many months. The magnitude and number of new features has been very large and the time available to fix things has been very short.

In coordination with the ICT and relevant subsystem leads, a decision has been made to further delay software acceptance, effectively delaying cycle 1 early science observations, in order to focus on system robustness and testing. The testing effort will hopefully yield a system that is more robust and capable of finding problems before they reach the telescope. The science team has implemented enhanced coordination between the DSO, system

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integration science team and CSV, resulting in more unified priorities and better support for the needs of CSV during the slowdown period. AIV station IV has started to make more progress because of the more flexible system.

8.1.1 New Capabilities Progress was made on a variety of new capabilities in March. Testing was carried out for the deployment of the new bulk data system, which should allow multiple arrays to be used in parallel. The month finished with an unfortunate period of lost data due to an attempted upgrade of this functionality. However, operations were carried out for a period of time with four arrays in parallel, namely total power work for system integration, ACA correlator interferometric mosaic observations, single dish spectral line observations with the ACA correlator, and interferometric mosaics on the baseline correlator. There is some residual instability that makes this model somewhat limited currently. A final solution to this problem is expected in April.

As part of the effort to achieve continuum, on-axis polarization observations for cycle 2, final datasets were taken to verify the instrumental polarization accuracy at the target frequencies in bands 3, 6 and 7. Unfortunately, the band 7 data was lost but, in combination with System Verification, concrete statements about the calibration accuracy were made. Data has been collected on the primary beam pattern in full polarization; a test observation has been planned, attempting to calibrate sources of known polarization. The hope is that all this footwork will result in concrete statements about calibration accuracy, field of view and overall performance in April.

The total power and ACA correlator observing modes was verified. Band 9 single dish side band separation data was taken and Common Astronomical Software Application (CASA) code to handle this observing mode was tested. The control subsystem delivered a new feature, namely fast switching, and solved a long-standing bug. Initial testing of fast switching was carried out. Iterations with software resulted in a arriving at a state where a new hardware limitation was discovered; work is currently been carried out with the local oscillator team to outline the solution. Alignment of flags and timing of executions within the system resulted in resolution of the final control subsystem blocker for acceptance. The Science IPT would like to thank the control group for their focus and dedication to getting these problems resolved. Initial tests of band-to-band phase transfer failed due to an error in the calculation of delays but the solution is already known and a focused effort on this will be carried out in April.

While waiting on a long baseline configuration and the system stabilization effort, work has begun on defining an observing mode test suite, an improved software regression suite and a performance regression suite. In addition, NAOJ delivered the transmitter for the polarized holography beacon at the high site. Richard Hills, returning for the inauguration, spent some time with the team before and after the event helping to commission this new instrument.

8.1.2 Calibration The testing of band-to-band phase transfer was restarted, but hardware problems were encountered. These problems are being worked out with the LO group, SE, science and software. Work has continued on both the quality of the overall water vapor radiometer (WVR) correction and the comparative performance of the online vs. offline phase correction. It has been discussed that perhaps the limit is being reached where the real, FE dependent frequencies of the WVRs must be used. The current plan is to attempt to add this to the phase correction process in April, during a focused online WVR mission.

Tsys was measured to be consistent on the baseline correlator and ACA correlator except at band 3 where the ACA correlator linearity correction is most problematic. There is a 5% bias at band 3 which will have to be corrected offline. The ACA correlator software developer and subsystem scientist (a member of CSV) worked tirelessly to get this worked out and the result of their hard work is being seen.

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Along with DSO and ARC staff, work on toolkit development is underway, to allow automatic reduction of the various test suites under discussion.

8.1.3 Science Observing Scripts (SOS) In March, the SOS group welcomed two additional members, Ignacio Toledo (DSO) and Neil Phillips (SIST). Another focused mission to resolve outstanding cycle 1 issues was largely successful with the only remaining SOS bugs being related to the single dish-observing mode. Preparation began for a review of the SOS module that will take place in April. In this review a discussion will take place regarding an overall refactor of the code structure considering the remaining scope of work in this area over the next two years. The involvement of computing in this effort will also be discussed.

8.1.4 Array Group In addition to his work on the artificial beacon, Richard Hills also worked on optimizing the tip/tilt of the secondary mirror in hopes of optimizing the antenna gains and minimizing the spill over noise. Work has also been carried out with system integration to optimize the use of the array with the newfound flexibility of multiple arrays. The hope is to help relieve their backlog of station IV in April. Finally, work is underway towards automating reduction and tracking of array calibration activities, as well as handing over those activities to DSO in preparation for the end of construction. 8.2 ASAC There was no ASAC meeting in March.

8.3 Staffing CSV is continuing to coordinate with the ARCs to bring in more resource. The visits from A. Remijan (NA ARC) in April and several people from the visitor program, namely Y. Asaki, S. Matsushita, and R. Lucas, are highly anticipated. CSV was very thankful for the visit from Richard Hills who, as part of his return trip for the inauguration, helped work on subreflector tip/tilt and the commissioning of the artificial beacon. Many CSV staff took part in the ALMA inauguration ceremony, conducting tours of both the OSF and AOS. As part of this effort, staff members conducted a variety of interviews with a range of print, radio and TV outlets. Thanks go out to the science staff, including CSV, DSO and SIST, for their critical support during this important milestone for the observatory.

9. INTEGRATED COMPUTING TEAM (ICT) The observatory has decided to impose a feature freeze on the online part of the ALMA software in order to fully validate the features delivered and required for cycle 1 operations and to work on the stability, reliability and performance of the software. As a consequence the re-start of early science observations has been delayed by approximately three months. A number of missions from the relevant ICT groups are foreseen during this period to work with the staff at the observatory to resolve the most pressing issues. Incremental software release R9.1.3 will be used exclusively for the online software during this period with the aim of stabilizing this release with a planned acceptance for early science use in early June. The following incremental releases (code name R9.1.4 and R9.1.5) will therefore focus on the observatory software only and be accepted for the start of cycle 2 activities independently.

The new RTI-DDS based bulk data system was successfully installed during a two-week mission by key developers from EU with significant support from the staff at the OSF and remotely from NA and EA. This new system not only improves the performance but most importantly the stability and robustness of this crucial part of the data flow.

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The ACA control team has focused on resolving some important issues that have hampered the progress of commissioning activities with the ACA correlator. They have also assisted in the rollout of the new bulk data system. Custom made DIP cards installed in ACA computer and data processing centers to communicate with ACA correlator hardware were confirmed to work with both the latest 32bit and 64bit OS to foresee future system-wide OS upgrade.

The control team has also resolved a number of important issues, including all but one of the issues considered to be blocking some aspects of ongoing commissioning activities. They also played an integral role in the new bulk data rollout. A new software engineer, James Girard, has been hired for this team. He will start in late April. Another of the current vacancies has been advertised for a software tester dedicated to the control and correlator software.

The common infrastructure team’s focus has been on the bulk data rollout and the analysis of some import issues with the notification channels. The latter is still ongoing, with progress being impacted significantly by the lack of antennas available due to the power transition. The archive has been fairly stable and most of the long-standing replication issues between the OSF and SCO have been resolved. The cooperation between the archive development team and the archive operators in Chile and the ARCs has been instrumental in stabilizing this once troublesome system.

The observatory interfaces teams have continued load testing of the submission service using cloud services with some promising results. Developments of features for the cycle 2 proposal generation, submission and evaluation process has been progressing well and are on target for the various test campaigns starting with the observing tool (OT) in May.

The telescope calibration team has started regular bi-weekly meetings with CSV and DSO representatives to discuss ongoing and future developments and important issues. Several improvements to the offline reprocessing of data have been implemented.

The CASA 4.1 release cycle is coming to a conclusion and requests for the 4.2 cycle planning priorities have been made. Significant testing of the pipeline, lead by T. Hunter (NAASC), has taken place this month, and many of the suggested improvements incorporated into the pipeline heuristics, although testing is still somewhat hampered by the lack of data from modes that will be new to cycle 1 (e.g. mixed correlator modes).

The integration and release management team has continued regular testing activities of incremental releases. A9.1R4 (based on R9.1.2) has been accepted for offline and system integration use. First promising results have been made using automated testing of web-based user interface applications. A transition plan of the leadership of this group to Chile is being drafted.

The software engineering and quality management group have successfully transitioned the entire ALMA software repository from CVS to subversion, including the full four-site replication of the repository. They have also prepared a new Twiki site for the ICT and all but finished the evaluation of a new JIRA system for the ICT with much improved workflows. A first draft outlining the quality management tasks and targets of this group has been prepared.

10. SCIENCE OPERATIONS Cycle 1 CSV, ICT and engineering will have priority during the next months, to work on commissioning of cycle 1 capabilities and improvements to infrastructure and overall system stability. During this time, early science observing will proceed at a lower priority and cycle 1 has been extended to end on January 31st, 2014. The users have been informed via a news item in the science portal.

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Cycle 2 Preparations Preparations of cycle 2 user documents and software tools (in particular the OT) are ongoing. Because of the ongoing commissioning work on cycle 1 capabilities, there is little progress on commissioning of cycle 2 capabilities, and apart from more antennas and receiver bands, no additional capabilities may be offered. Cycle 2 capabilities have to be demonstrated before May 31st to be included in the call.

Face-to-face meetings The SciOps IPT held their quarterly face-to-face meeting at IRAM in Grenoble on March 25th-27th, including a meeting with the managers of the EU ARC nodes. Among the items discussed were the science operations policies, cycle 1 operations, preparations for cycle 2, policies for ALMA staff access to proprietary data, and preparations for the April ICT meeting.

The Archive Working Group held their yearly f2f meeting in Mitaka on March 12th-14th, and the Observing Tool Working Group (OTWG) held their yearly f2f meeting in Edinburgh on March 18th-22nd. These meetings focus on software status, feature planning, testing, and requirements.

DSO Hiring: The internal hiring process to replace Kengo Tachihara (who left for a position at Nagoya University) has started. The hiring of the data analyst and one of the two science archive content managers are still on hold due to the budget situation. EA ARC: An EA ARC review by the advisory committee for NAOJ Radio Astronomy Division was carried out on March 4th-6th.

Ken Tatematsu, ARC manager, reported the status of cycles 0 and 1, and the prospect for cycle 2 in the ALMA special session in the semiannual meeting of the Astronomical Society of Japan, on March 22nd.

EU ARC: Activities:

• Generation of scheduling blocks (SBs) for the first three observing batches of ALMA cycle pipeline cluster configuration, and production of a usage guide.

• Participation in tests for quality assurance and trend analysis (AQUA), the shift log tool and the OT dedicated director’s time version.

• OT development is moving towards cycle 2; the OTWG meeting was held in Edinburgh.

• Various activities related to single dish data reduction and combination of ACA/single dish/main array data.

• Archive scientists face-to-face meeting in Mitaka, Japan.

• ARC coordinating committee face-to-face meeting in Grenoble.

NA ARC: The NAASC supported data reduction visits from five cycle 0 investigators. A CASA workshop was held in Charlottesville from February 28th to March 1st, with approximately 20 participants. Batch 3 SBs were generated for NA supported cycle 1 projects. Improvements were made to the helpdesk fail-over process. A large effort was devoted to pre-release testing for CASA 4.1 and planning for CASA 4.2, as well as on ALMA pipeline testing. Notified cycle 0 users of CASA shadowing issues and new solar system object flux models.

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Al Wootten provided two turnos of astronomer-on-duty support.

Final preparations were made for a NA ALMA Development workshop and the “2013 Rocks” science meeting to be held in April. Plans were made for cycle 2 documentation and outreach materials and a video explaining “Largest Angular Scale” was produced by NRC staff.

11. ALMA DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING (ADE) 11.1 Management At the beginning of the month the TURBOMACH contractor was working on turbine generator (TG) number3 with the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fuel system. A test was performed on Lewa skid pump number 3 on turbine number 3, and this test produced a power shutdown. Subsequently the turbine has been operating nominally.

Significant resources were applied to ensure a successful inauguration. Many displays were prepared and facilities readied for the visitors.

11.2 Antenna Group (AG) In March the AG staff provided valuable support to, and participated in, the ALMA inauguration. This is reflected in the large number of hours spent in support of other groups in the monthly hours report Figure 2.

Figure 2- AG Monthly Hours Report

This month there was a significant rise in the amount of antenna preventive maintenance scheduled, see Figure 3. This reflects the change in priorities as AIV ramps down and preventive maintenance work increases and the fact that AG has begun to perform preventive maintenance on the AEM antennas. This presents a new challenge to the team to learn the procedures and processes of the European antennas.

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Figure 3 - Antenna Preventive Maintenance Work Orders

The antenna fault work order plot for March, Figure 4, shows a large number of work orders still in progress these are a combination of on-going investigation into recurring faults and faults that have been assigned to the AIPTs for resolution.

Figure 4 - Antenna fault work order plot.

11.3 Instrumentation Group (IG) General: All IG members spent considerable effort to prepare the lab spaces and display stations for the inauguration festivities.

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Front End: AIV activities: Eleven CCAs from NAOJ have been PAS-tested; a holography campaign on CM11 was performed; FEs, WVRs and amplitude calibration devices (ACDs) were installed in two new antennas. Operations: Swapping of six FEs at the AOS has been supported; eight individual CCAs were replaced on FEs.

Back End: AIV activities: one holography campaign was supported on CM11..

Cryo Team: Maintenance & Troubleshooting: AOS power shutdowns were supported by cryo team presence at the AOS during these events.

Correlator/DTS: Operations: Five failures of LRUs in the baseline correlator were investigated, as were two events of timing issues, a case of artifacts in spectral information, and a failure on the ACA correlator. 11.4 Maintenance Groups (MG) Power Generation:

Failures on the power generation system Date Time Unit Description Root cause

04-03-12 11:31 TG #3 High pressure in Lewa pump number 2 of TG#3. Shutdown. During test with Turbomach.

High pressure

23-03-2012 18:00 TG #1 Low air pressure in Lewa pump of

TG#1. Shutdown.

Airhose that controls 3-way valve (diesel system)

24-03-2012 06:08 TG #2 Low pressure in Diesel. Shutdown. Diesel pump

failure

The failure of the plastic tube that provoked the shutdown on March 23rd is described in Site NCR-854.

A metal flexible hose was loosened during the shutdown on March 24th. This important issue is described in Site NCR-858.

Power Generated:

By PPS = 896 [MWh]

By AOS TPS Generators = 640.98 [MWh]

Total power generation in March = 1536.98 [MWh]

Fuel Consumption measured by generators flowmeters:

LPG (Butane) by Turbines = 341,69 [Ton]

Diesel by AOS TPS Generators = 177.3 [m3]

PPS transition

The transition of TPS to PPS at the AOS was scheduled to start on April 3rd.

On Sunday April 7th the entire AOS is to be energized by the PPS, including branches 1 and 2.

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11.5 AIV Processing

During this month one additional array element (AE) was delivered to the AOS, bringing the delivered total to 57 or 86% of completion.

One new EU antenna got transferred to AIV and two AEs remained in processing throughout the month.

A station IV review of six additional AEs took place, accomplishing full verification of 32 out of the delivered 57 array elements. Another review of eight AEs has been prepared and been scheduled for early April. Nevertheless, station IV activities remain about two months behind schedule.

Acceptance testing of the last three FEs and the last two BE antenna articles is ongoing and is expected to conclude by the end of April. With this, AIV acceptance testing of all major sub-systems required for integration would finalize, as shown below:

11.6 Integration of bands 4/8/10 at OSF During March further support was given to the teams that set up the FETMSs at the OSF. Concerns remain regarding the readiness of the JAO staff to duly operate these systems, considering their complexity and the fact that the EA and NA systems’ software platforms are not identical, which means that different procedures apply.

A test stand for WCA PAS testing has been completed at the OSF. Also, further acceptance tests of band 4, 8 and 10 CCAs were carried out. The following graph shows the current status of the band 4/8/10 WCAs and CCAs at the OSF:

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Integration and verification activities of bands 4, 8 and 10 will start from April on FE S/N 21 and FE S/N 61.

11.7 Array System Group (ASG) An outage of the PPS occurred at 17:51 CLT on March 23rd, affecting all systems at the OSF, the AOS TB and one antenna at the AOS. The ASG supported the initial response and investigation. This failure evidenced that a compressed air system used by the turbine control system can become a single-point failure of the power system.

ASG supported the concept of operations (ConOps) team by coordinating the provision of information regarding the ADE operations activities. ASG provided the ConOps team with the ADE staffing required to support the operations reference scenario and several suggestions were provided for alternate, cost-saving, scenarios. ASG also helped refine the definitions of the other existing alternate scenarios. The next steps involve working out the reductions in staffing and cost, and the impact on observatory availability for each of the alternate scenarios under consideration.

ASG staff worked with key staff from other ADE groups to prepare a contingency plan to deal with any possible power problems experienced during the ALMA Inauguration events. The power was stable during the events and so the plan was not activated. However, the results captured in the plan are part of an ASG initiative to improve the observatory response to power outages - the preliminary conclusions of this work are now available. The next steps of initiating a wider review of the proposals and following up with implementation are in progress.

Work on the problem reporting system has been delayed by the inauguration activities and is not expected to be operational until the middle of April.

Finally, ASG has been preparing for the APP CDR, planned for May. The CDR plan has been drafted and a statement regarding the JAO resources required to support the development and deployment of the APP has been prepared, as requested by the ALMA Board.

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12. ALMA DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTING (ADC) 12.1 Management BEST in Germany informed they could not honor the conditions of the current framework contract (65% discount from current list prices) for the maintenance fee to be renewed in 2013 before their contract expires in May. This accelerated the steps to identify alternative providers to initiate a new procurement process. Oracle Chile has verbally indicated that they would be interested in dealing directly with ALMA, instead of doing it through authorized distributors, given the peculiar characteristic and scientific value of the observatory. Conversations in this direction will continue and it is expected to make significant progress in April.

The datacenter emergency protocol has been updated and it is in the process to get approve and signed off.

12.2 Information Technology Group (IT) The main activity during March was the preparation of the inauguration ceremonies. To host the invitees, IT reshaped the ALMA network in order to maximize the capacity of the resources devoted to the ceremony and provide hundreds of journalists with the necessary resources to collect and send information from ALMA. During the ceremonies on March 13th three different streams with video/data were distributed: one connecting the AOS and OSF was projected in the main tent, OSF Main conference room and Vertex facilities; a second stream provided video/data to Santiago premises; and a third streamed to the general public via the Internet. Connections via the Internet reached hundreds of thousands of users, stressing ALMA’s network and systems with an unprecedented load of requests; the same happened with the internal servers, when journalists from all over the world accessed them to collect information about the observatory.

New volumes for ALMA e-mail were aggregated to ALMA’s storage system, increasing the capacity to keep user data. IT provided also support to the set up of new ICT collaboration infrastructure (mailing lists, wiki, JIRA).

12.3 Software Group (SG) The section is now reported in the Integrated Computing Team section.

12.4 Archive and Pipeline Operations Group (APO) Improvements and new tools have been introduced to the archive operations health check procedures. APO and the data management group are continuously checking for potential errors proactively, analyzing and sending feedback to developers/ALMA project data model (APDM) experts, so that these inconsistencies are fixed in advance without affecting operations. It is expected that the number of inconsistencies on APDM will tend to zero with this approach.

APO test benchmarks tests continue. Results will be presented in April during the database administrator workshop, taking place April 15th and 16th at the SCO.

Regarding the meeting itself, a tentative agenda is in progress, and presentations are being reviewed. The ESO/VLT Network/Oracle team has been invited to participate. They will likely present a study on network optimization that would eventually benefit the overall transmissions.

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Wide-area network optimization tests are in progress. For the exercise Riverbed equipment on loan was installed at the OSF and SCO. They are expected to optimize bandwidth utilization (de-duplication, compression, transmission window adjustments, etc.) Test servers are being at both ends (tb-s1-ngasbe01.osf.alma.cl and apotest-rngas01.sco.alma.cl). This equipment will be moved to production to collect real data and statistics.

13. ADMINISTRATION (ADA) Activities in Administration were heavily focused on support for the ALMA inauguration events. ADA staff was involved with budget and contract activities, travel and camp reservations, off-site reservations, and the SCO celebration. As was evident with the various event proceedings and comments of the staff and guests, all activities were handled successfully.

In addition, financial modeling support was provided to the ConOps working group to provide historical and forecast staffing and running cost data. ADA will continue to support the ConOps efforts through completion of the activity.

14. HUMAN RESOURCES There is one word to sum up March: inauguration! There was significant staff participation with the preparation and logistics of all inauguration related events which spanned several days. In addition, staff participatory events included a photography contest, a children’s artwork contest and a call for items to be placed in ALMA’s time capsule. To see the results of the first two contests, please visit ALMA’s webpage at this link:

http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/announcements-events/540-photographs-and-drawings-featured-at-the-alma-inauguration-competition-results

Additional efforts to make staff feel connected to the inauguration included a lunch in Vitacura, with video streaming of the event from the OSF, and a dinner at the OSF with musical accompaniment by a JAO staff member playing guitar and a Chilean singer with connections to JAO staff.

JAO management was very pleased to receive a letter of appreciation from the leaders of ALMA’s union concerning the inauguration and its inclusion of staff participation and appreciation related programs.

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Local Staff Members (LSMs)

Recruitment and Selection

LSM on-going Recruitment

There are currently eight LSM positions which the JAO needs to fill, with some recruitment on hold until budgetary issues are clarified:

• ALMA Department of Engineering (5)

o Antenna Group (1) (On-Hold) o Maintenance Group (2) (On-Hold) o Instrument Group (2)

• ALMA Department of Science (3)

o Program Management Group (1) (On Hold) o Data Management Group (On Hold) o Data Management Group

LSM Departures:

Five LSMs left the organization during March, all due to the transition from construction to operations:

1 Engineer I, ADE-Array System Group; 1 Technician II (Mechanical), ADE- Instrument Group;

1 Technician I (Mechanical), ADE-Antenna Group; 1 Technician I, ADE-Instrument Group; 1 Maintenance Technician II (Driver).

ISM Departures

Thijs de Graauw, ALMA director, and Lewis Ball, ALMA deputy director, left the JAO in March and the organization prepared for the transition to the incoming ALMA director, Pierre Cox. In addition, two NAOJ staff members left the JAO to return to Japan; Kengo Tachihara, system astronomer within the data management group (at DSO), and Kyoko Ashitagawa, software engineer within the ALMA department of computing (ADC).

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15. EDUCATION AND PUBLIC OUTREACH (EPO) All EPO efforts were focused on the ALMA inauguration event, which convened 130 journalists, cameramen and photographers from around the world, including 25 coming with the Chilean President and ministerial delegations. Most of the crews were part of the Press Day on March 12th, which consisted of AOS and OSF tours, a press conference and organized interviews with ALMA staff.

As a result of those efforts, hundreds of ALMA stories were published worldwide in different formats (see picture below as an example).

The Communication Task Force (EPO-IPT) finished its months-long work of creating, editing and printing VIP gifts for the ALMA inauguration event, including:

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- - Photo book of the ALMA history – NAOJ (see picture above) - - “The ALMA Universe” book updated – JAO with ESO - - “The ALMA Partnership Contribution” brochure – NRAO - - “ALMA – In Search of our Cosmic Origins” video – ESO

The JAO EPO also worked on the Community Day ceremony at the AOS, inviting local press to the activity and preparing a special brochure called “The Universe of our Elders”, as a gift for the Atacameño invitees. This brochure (see picture below) is an announcement of a book that will be published shortly, containing the results of a five years Ethno-Astronomy research project supported by ALMA.

Media Visits and Talks An overwhelming demand for ALMA interviews, talks and visits was registered before, during and after the inauguration events. Nevertheless, no separate media visitors were accepted during the ALMA inauguration month. Two talks were given during March: at the Universidad de los Andes (School of Journalism) and Universidad Mayor (School of Electronic Engineering) by astronomer Liza Videla and engineer David Rabanus, respectively. Many more were coordinated for the following months.

Website and Press Releases Five press releases (PRs) and announcements were featured on our website in March: two, announcing the streaming of the press conference and the inauguration event; a PR of the inauguration itself (“ALMA Inauguration Heralds New Era of Discovery”) and a PR of a new discovery (“ALMA Rewrites History of Universe's Stellar Baby Boom”). The JAO website also uploaded an announcement on the results of the photography and painting contests as part of the inauguration event.

All new products (brochures, leaflets and the book) were made available in PDF on the ALMA website:

http://www.almaobservatory.org/en/outreach/publications.

They were also made available through ESO’s website.

Links to different videos of the ceremony were placed on the ALMA homepage, including the videos of the Chilean president visiting ALMA, the streaming of the press conference, a clip of the thanksgiving ceremony at the Chajnantor plateau, and greetings sent to ALMA from the International Space Station.

Finally, Dutch journalist Govert Schilling, who was part of the press covering the ALMA inauguration, stayed in Chile after the ceremony and was hired by the JAO-EPO to write the contents of a new section dedicated to children –still in preparation- on the ALMA website.

EPO Partners Besides the joint work mentioned above, NRAO-EPO organized a radio-astronomy exhibition including ALMA at a Chilean subway station, which lasted one month and had 4,000 visitors.

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ESO-EPOD wrote the press release of the ALMA Inauguration, edited a 16-minute video about it and created an ESO cast: "The ALMA Inauguration".

NAOJ-EPO held two pubic talks in Japan and launched a new web page including staff interviews: http://alma.mtk.nao.ac.jp/j/special/

16. SAFETY

Training Basic training was given to ALMA project members (contractors and JAO) in areas such as Lockout Tagout techniques and yearly safety training.

ALMA Inauguration

ALMA Safety prepared and executed a safety plan for the inauguration. It included emergency procedures, health aspects, and support to visitors. The personnel team included 12 paramedics, three doctors, and the entire JAO safety team (ALMA and NRAO). Health checkups for AOS visitors were carried out at ALMA OSF policlinic as at San Pedro hotels. A total of 870 health checks were carried out.

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17. LIST OF COMMONLY USED ACRONYMS ACA: Atacama Compact Array ACRV: Acceptance Review ADA: ALMA Department of Administration ADC: ALMA Department of Computing ADE: ALMA Department of Engineering AE: Array Element AEM: Consortium building the European antennas AG: Antenna Group AIPT: Antenna IPT AIV: Assembly, Integration and Verification AOS: Array Operations Site AQUA: quality assurance and trend analysis ARC: ALMA Regional Center ASAC: ALMA Science Advisory Committee ASG: Array System Group APDM: ALMA Project Data Model APP: ALMA Phasing Project BCR: Budget Change Request BE: Back End BUS: Back Up Structure CAR: Corrective Action Request CASA: Common Astronomical Software Application CCA: Cold Cartridge Assembly CCB: Change Control Board CDR: Critical Design Review CIPT: Computing IPT ConOps: Concept of Operations CSV: Commissioning and Science Verification CTS: Cartridge Test Set CVS: Concurrent Versions System DSO: Department of Science Operations DTS: Data Transfer System EA: East Asian EDM: Electronic Documentation Management EPO: Education and Public Outreach ESO: European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere EU: European FE: Front End FEIC: Front End Integration Centers FETIM: Front End Thermal Interlock Modules FETM: Front End Test Measurement FETMS: Front End Test Measurement System FEHV: Front End Handling Vehicle GUI: Graphical User Interface HVAC: Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning ICD: Interface Control Document IG: Instrumentation Group ICT: Integrated Computer Team IPT: Integrated Product Team ISM: International Staff Member IT: Information Technology JAO: Joint ALMA Office / Joint ALMA Observatory LO: Local Oscilador

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LPG: Liquefied Petroleum Gas LRU: Line Replaceable Unit LSM: Local Staff Member MIPT: Management Integrated Product Team NA: North American NAASC: North American ALMA Science Center NAOJ: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan NCR: Non Conformance Report NRAO: National Radio Astronomy Observatory (USA) NTC: NRAO Technology Center OPT: Optical Pointing Telescope ORR: Operations Readiness Review OSF: Operations Support Facility OT: Observing Tool OTWG: Observing Tool Working Group PA/QA: Product Assurance/Quality Assurance PAI: Preliminary Acceptance In-house PAS: Provisional Acceptance on Site PDR: Preliminary Design Review PI: Principal Investigator PM: MELCO 12-m antennas PMCS: Project Management Control System PPS: Permanent Power System PR: Press Release RAL: Rutherford Appleton Laboratory RfW: Request for WaiverSB: Scheduling Block SE: System Engineering SEF: Site Erection Facility SIST: System Integration Science Team SOS: Science Observing Scripts TB: Technical Building TF: Technical Facility TG: turbine generator TFB: Tunable Filter Bank TPS: Temporary Power System TRR: Test Readiness Review Tsys: System temperature UPS: Uninterruptible Power Supply WCA: Warm Cartridge Assembly WVR: Water Vapor Radiometer