The rainy season has begun in West Texas. In the last week we only opened once at night; during that night we were able to capture the mirrors taken out for the 21 point test. Mirror alignment is now routine.

The rain is also having a small impact on the contractors working in W. Texas on the remote thermal area. The large pipe vault has become a nice reflecting pool and it is clear that we will need a french drain at the low end of this vault even though the expectation is that the vault with be mostly sealed to the runoff. The concrete vault has been completed and this week the electrical and mechanical contractors are placing conduit in the vault.

This week the Distance Measuring Interferometer (DMI) arrived from France and the engineering team in Austin made sure that it will fit into the test mass mounts which will come out in the 2nd week in July. The DMI will arrive in W. Texas on Thursday so that we can get it setup in the coming week both for the test mass and for the CCAS tower.

Work on the TCS (telescope control software) continues this week. The team hopes to be generating trajectories using RA/DEC or Alt/Az by the end of the week.