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Increasing Safety Oversight

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LSST construction efforts on Cerro Pachón are scaling up rapidly and Safety Coordinator Sandra Romero, shown here with Project Manager Victor Krabbendam (L) and Site Manager Eduardo Serrano (R), will help monitor the on-site contractor's safety program and activities on Cerro Pachón. Sandra has been working with us for several months but we recently coordinated efforts with Gemini to have her spend more time with LSST on the summit where she will bring her construction expertise to our increasing level of oversight. The site remains the responsibility of our General contractor, Besalco, that has been executing a very successful safety program but AURA/LSST oversight will be increasing as the construction team reaches over 100 people on site and the work site expands.

LSST at Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Conference in Nashville

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LSST Optics Engineer Constanza Araujo attended the Society of Women Engineers’ (SWE) WE15 conference October 22-25, 2015 in Nashville, TN where she interacted with colleagues from around the world and represented LSST at a career fair booth. WE15 is the world’s largest conference and career fair for women in engineering and technology with more than 8,000 attendees from around the globe. This year, for the first time, a large number of engineers from telescope projects were present. The conference’s more than 350 professional development sessions provided opportunities for continuing education and to learn new skills and life hacks.

LSST M1M3 Mirror Cell Contract to CAID Industries

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On October 6th, AURA awarded the LSST M1M3 Mirror Cell contract to CAID Industries, Inc. based in Arizona. The work includes the final design, manufacturing, assembly, and vacuum testing of the 26,000kg (57,000lb) steel cell. The large, complex 9m x 9m x 2m (30ft x 30ft x 7ft) weldment safely supports the M1M3 mirror while on the telescope mount assembly and also functions as the low vacuum chamber vessel to enable coating of the mirror surfaces. The work will be done at the CAID facility in Tucson over the next 16 months. Upon completion, the Mirror Cell will be integrated with the M1M3 mirror currently in storage in Tucson, to enable active optical testing at the University of Arizona Richard F. Caris Mirror Lab prior to shipment of the systems to Chile.

Data Management Boot Camp

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October 9, 2015 - The LSST Data Management team held a successful Boot Camp earlier this week to introduce new hires and interested users to DM processes and the Science Pipelines stack.  Boot Camp took place at three locations, connected by Blue Jeans videoconferencing.   Each day involved a few hours of lectures by subject experts followed by a hands-on tutorial with a local instructor.  The agenda and presentations can be found on the LSST Community Forum (community.lsst.org); video recordings of lectures will be posted there as well after some editing.  Participants at each site included (L-R):

LSST in Spain

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October 2, 2015 - Hola from Madrid! As part of the design/build process, a nine-person team from LSST traveled to Spain for the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA) Preliminary Design Review. This week-long event concluded with prime contractor Empresarios Agrupados receiving approval to go ahead with long lead-time procurements and to proceed to Final Design. Beginning in mid-2016 the TMA will be fabricated and tested at the Asturfeito facility in the Aviles Port region of northern Spain with integration scheduled for 2018 on Cerro Pachón.

Sandra Ortiz Promoted

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October 2, 2015 - We are pleased to announce the promotion of Sandra Ortiz to the position of Executive Assistant to the Directorate. In this role Sandra will provide executive level support for the LSSTPO Directorate and Project Management Office
Having been with LSST since June 2013, Sandra brings a diverse set of skills and wealth of experience with her into this role. Her track record of outstanding customer service, meticulous scheduling, and multi-tasking will be an invaluable asset to our strategic and tactical objectives regarding administrative matters at the Tucson Headquarters. Congratulations Sandra!

Asteroids, Inc.

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September 25, 2015 - At the invitation of John Grunsfeld, the Associate Administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, Steve, Kahn, Zeljko Ivezic, and Mario Juric (shown L-R in the accompanying image) made a visit to NASA Headquarters in Washington to discuss LSST’s capabilities for near earth object (NEO) detection and orbit characterization. Matt Mountain and Heidi Hammel from AURA were also in attendance. Mario showed that while there remain some uncertainties regarding “false positives” that may arise in our image differencing algorithms, existing experience with DECam makes it very likely that LSST will detect ~ 70% of NEOs down to 140 m in size, and with some optimization of our cadence strategy, can increase the fraction to 85% or higher.

Chile on our Mind

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September 18th is Chilean Independence Day as on this day in 1810 Chile broke from Spanish rule. The LSST Project Office took the opportunity to join with our Chilean co-workers and celebrated with empanadas, cake, and a lesson in Chilean slang. Thanks to Telescope & Site Optics Engineer Constanza Araujo for initiating the idea and all who helped organize the fun, team-building event. We’ll all be looking for chances to show off our new language skills! The Independence celebration added a positive note to a difficult week for our Chilean colleagues in the aftermath of a strong earthquake centered 150km from La Serena.

Data Management Team Growth Continues

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The LSST Data Management team continued to grow during the first year of the construction project. In recent months, four team members joined the Tucson-based Science Quality and Reliability Engineering (SQuaRE) group and three others came on board at DM partner institutions SLAC, Princeton University, and University of Washington. Contact information for all seven new team members can be found in the LSST Contacts Database. Read more after the jump.

LSST Construction – Above Ground on Pachón!

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August 28, 2015 - As the Chilean winter snow melts, the LSST facility on Cerro Pachón begins to emerge above the ground level - rebar posts extend from the concrete footings of the support columns of the observatory building. The summit construction is progressing to be ready for the initial integration with the dome in January 2017 and be fully completed by January 2018. The facility will provide 3,000 square meters of maintenance and support space in a footprint that extends from 17 meters below the summit platform to 38 meters above the summit to the top of the dome.

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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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