December 4, 2015 - The LSST Operations Plan is now under development by the LSST Operations Planning Team (LOPT, co-chaired by Deputy Director Beth Willman and Systems Scientist Chuck Claver). The LOPT is starting with a bird's eye view of the operations goals and deliverables, and working from the "top down" to generate the work breakdown structure, staffing, and non-labor expenses needed to deliver in Operations. The LOPT is building on the Operations Plan led by Sidney Wolff and presented at FDR, and is also supported by the work of the Technical Operations Working Group (TOWG). The TOWG is taking a use case-based approach to operations planning, evaluating technical decisions that have to be taken now that will affect operations, developing process flows for key operational activities, and ensuring that the operations plan that is developed is consistent with infrastructure under construction.
The Operations Proposal will be submitted to the funding agencies at the end of calendar year 2016, with a number of review milestones along the way. In the near term, there will be a joint DOE-NSF-LSST-AURA meeting at the DOE on December 18, 2015 to jointly discuss basic operations planning. The first significant milestone along the plan development path will be an internal conceptual review of the operations plan, and will take place in Tucson February 11 and 12, 2016.
The LSST Operations Planning Team (LOPT) reports to the LSST Director, Steve Kahn, and includes the following domain expertise:
Business Management - D. Calabrese (LSST)
Camera - K. Reil (SLAC)
Costing - K. Long (LSST), C. Petry (LSST)
Data Management Software Engineering and Development - KT Lim (SLAC)
Data Processing and Archiving - D. Petravik (NCSA)
Education and Public Outreach – S. Jacoby (LSST)
Science Operations - Z. Ivezic (UW), B. Willman
Systems Engineering - B. Selvy (LSST), C. Claver
Technical Writing and Document Preparation Assistance – R. McKercher (LSST)
Telescope and Site – L. Allen (NOAO), C. Claver, S. Thomas (LSST)
In addition, AURA VP for Programs D. Lehr is advising the LOPT on operations planning and proposal preparation.
Financial support for Rubin Observatory comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Cooperative Support Agreement No. 1202910, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515, and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation. The NSF-funded Rubin Observatory Project Office for construction was established as an operating center under management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The DOE-funded effort to build the the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (LSSTCam) is managed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an
independent federal agency created by Congress
in 1950 to promote the progress of science. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.
NSF and DOE will continue to support Rubin Observatory in its Operations phase. They will also provide support for scientific research with LSST data.
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