Just before the winter break we had the Physical Plant team and some of the HET staff work on taking down the walls and roof of the MRS enclosure. The MRS is being stored away and that space will be used in the next 8 months for storage of the VIRUS units as they begin to arrive. We still have to remove the huge optics benches and the floor of the enclosure but once those are out we will be ready for the first VIRUS unit to arrive in West Texas by the end of January.

Work continues on putting components of the lower and upper tracker drive assembly in place. All of that work needs to be done before the new tracker can arrive. The original scheduled date for the tracker to arrive was the week of Jan 27, as see in the gantt chart blogged on August 12, 2013. We should be able to make this milestone without any delays.

The electrical and mechanical contractors worked over the Christmas break to try to make up for delays earlier in the planning part of the project. We now have 480 V power in the lower electrical room and the trenches cut in the concrete dome floor are in place ready for the liquid and vapor nitrogen lines.

Happy New Year all; it looks to be an exciting one!