ALMA News from the April 2006 Issue of the NRAO Newsletter

ATACAMA LARGE MILLIMETER ARRAY

ALMA Construction

Figure 1. The technical building at the 16,000 foot Array Operations Site took shape over the austral summer. Left-to-right: Eduardo Donoso (NA Site IPT lead), Bill Porter (NA Deputy Project Manager), Andres Zumaeta (Con-Pax Construction), and Jeff Zivick (NA Antenna IPT lead).	Figure 2. Vertex will assemble its ALMA antennas at the Operations Support Facility antenna laydown area, which was levelled in preparation for construction of that facility by Vertex.

The foundation for the Technical Building at the 16,000 foot Array Operations Site (AOS) has been completed and work has progressed substantially on the building shell itself. A contract for the final finishing work awaits approval by the ALMA Board and the funding agencies.

The area where Vertex will conduct its on-site antenna erection and testing has been graded. This site is located at the Eastern edge of the Operations Support Facility (OSF) area. The vendor is expected to begin development of the site shortly. The Vertex antenna acquisition continues toward delivery of the first antenna to Chile late in 2006. During February, a Preliminary Pre-Production Design Review was held to track progress and identify issues for resolution.

Before a quorum of the production antennas arrive in Chile, the prototype ALMA system is being assembled into a one-baseline interferometer using the remaining two prototype antennas at the ALMA Test Facility (ATF) in New Mexico. The Mitsubishi prototype antenna has been disassembled for return to Osaka, Japan retrofit to production designs.

At the ALMA Prototype System Integration group in Socorro, Peter Napier has assumed his new role as Team Leader. After final lab tests, the system now being measured in the New Mexico Array Operations Center (AOC) labs will be reassembled at the ATF for astronomical testing, which will commence in the fall. In early 2008, this process will be repeated at the OSF in Chile as production antennas become available.

The ATF site lacks the atmospheric clarity needed for some ALMA compo­nent tests, including the water vapor radiometers (WVRs), which operate at the atmospherically difficult 183 GHz water line. Therefore, tests of the two prototype WVRs are occurring on the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea. These tests should provide the confidence needed to let the production contracts for these systems.

As the last NRAO Newsletter was going to press, ESO had just signed (December 6, 2005) a contract with Alcatel Alenia Space to supply twenty-five antennas for the ALMA project. This was followed just before Christmas by the signing of a contract with Scheuerle Fahrzeugfabrik to supply two special vehicles for the transport of the radio antennas. These vehicles must lift the 110 ton antenna systems and transport them over the ALMA road, often for several tens of kilome­ters, to and from the antenna stations and the OSF. To do this, these vehicles are equipped with twin 1340 horsepower engines; the transporters measure 33 feet wide, 52 feet long, and 15 feet high.

As a result of the decision that ALMA would procure substantial numbers of antennas of differing design, the newly rebaselined budget, reviewed by an external panel last October, was further modified. This updated budget was then reviewed by a subset of the same panel which had met in October. This Delta Cost Review was held January 25 at the National Science Foundation. The performance of the production antennas can be pre­dicted as a result of the tests performed to validate the specifications of the prototype antennas. At the NSF review, the Project Scientists reported that the effect of the two designs on ALMA science was minimal and that there may in fact be some benefits owing to the strict specifications on the production antennas.

During the week following the Delta Cost Review, a review of the ALMA North America Cost and Management was held in Charlottesville, Virginia. The review committee, composed of external experts, was chaired by Donald Hartill of Cornell. The report of this committee was to be delivered to NSF by the end of February.

	Figure 3. ALMA prototype Water Vapor atmospherically Radiometer installed on an antenna of the Submillimeter Array.
Figure 4. At the ALMA Test Facility, the Mitsubishi prototype antenna was disassembled for shipment to Japan, retrofitting to pro­duction specifications, and delivery to the ALMA site.
	Figure 5. Michael Turner, NSF Asst. Director for Math and Physical Sciences, examines an ALMA 1.3 mm receiver cartridge with Review committee member Neal Erickson (Univerity of Massachusetts).

The President's FY2007 budget was delivered on February 7. On March 2, 2006, NSF Director Arden Bement provided testimony on the agency's $6.02 billion budget request to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, the Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce and Related Agencies. The Administration's request would increase NSF's budget by $439 million, or 7.9 percent, over FY 2006. The increase is part of the President's American Competitiveness Initiative, which includes a commitment to double NSF's budget over the next ten years. At the hearing, Dr. Bement noted that "providing world-class facilities and infrastructure" is a top 2007 priority. "NSF has a long-established role in providing state-of-the-art infrastructure to meet major research challenges. Our strategy is to invest in tools that promise significant advances in a field of research and to make them widely available to a broad cross-section of investigators. Total funding in the Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account is proposed at $240.45 million." ALMA is one of five ongoing MREFC projects. In questions later, Bement identified ALMA as a transformational instrument. Details on the ALMA budget may be found at the NSF FY2007 budget website. $47,890,000 is requested for ALMA Construction. As may be seen in the ALMA Funding Profile Table, ALMA Operations and Maintenance funds are for the first time a major component of the FY2007 budget.