The race against time for Cycle 10

Oct 3, 2023 | News | 3 comments

Tags: ALMA

☆☆☆☆☆
On Saturday, September 30th, a new cycle of observations began. And if every year it is a great challenge to meet the stipulated deadlines, the cyber-attack we suffered at the end of October 2022 made the start of Cycle 10 a real race against the clock.
“All the time we were without computing support, all those hours of observation were lost. Cycle 9 had just started and it was super challenging because we started with a very different target of hours than what it was going to be”, says Cristóbal Jara, our AMG Deputy Manager.

As a result of this mismatch, the two engineering days per week were reduced. “It was more complicated for the supervisors to schedule the daily activities, because they had to try to include more things and match the needs of Science in order to work in parallel, but it worked out well,” adds Cristóbal.

A similar challenge was faced by the Computing team, in charge of developing the software for this specific cycle and ensuring its correct deployment in the different milestones scheduled throughout the year.
In addition to having to relegate software integration and verification until it could be observed again, they decided to delay the start of the Call For Proposal, from March to April, but keeping the Cycle 10 start date for October 1st. “This resulted in a compression of all the activities taking place at the observatory,” explains Jorge Avarias, our Senior Software Engineer.

Added to that difficulty is that this cycle brings a new instrument: the ACA spectrometer. A tool that will replace the Total Power work performed by the ACA correlator with the PM antennas: “The spectrometer is designed for the future of ALMA, so when the time comes to implement the WSU, it will be able to be modified and adapted to these new requirements”, says Jorge.

As always, he validates this work with the Software Acceptance team, a counterpart that confirms how difficult this task was.
“The compressed schedule was a challenge for every party involved. Around the end of last year, there was even a pessimistic outlook that the start of Cycle 10 might have to be delayed,” says Akihiko Hirota, System Astronomer and member of the Validation team.

Akihito assures that this setback could only be overcome thanks to the work of the entire team, with special mention to the PMG group, the Software team and the developers: “Fortunately, despite the challenge, we accomplished the acceptance of the Cycle 10 online software on time”.

This feat not only belongs to the JAO, but to ALMA Wide, says Norikazu Mizuno, our Deputy Director of Operations: “This year people understood that we had a challenge facing the cyber attack. Of course, people are quite stressed, also mentally. Nevertheless, thanks to everyone’s efforts, we finally achieved it”.

A recognition of our performance both in the preparations for Cycle 10 and the results of Cycle 9 that we have just concluded: “We did more than 3,300 hours, so if we add the 650 hours we lost due to the cyberattack it means we almost reached 4,000 hours, something we have never achieved before in the history of ALMA, so it is kind of our best cycle ever,” concludes Norikazu.

PHOTO GALLERY
Click on the pictures below to see how we celebrated the beginning of Cycle 10 at the OSF and SCO.
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3 Comments

  1. Felipe Salinas
    Felipe Salinas on October 4, 2023 at 5:28 pm

    Very, very interesting to know the details about the challenges that our team faced in order to start with this new cycle. Very well done!!!

    Reply
  2. Martin Diaz
    Martin Diaz on October 4, 2023 at 5:30 pm

    Excelente trabajo en equipo!!!

    Reply
  3. Juande Santander-Vela
    Juande Santander-Vela on October 4, 2023 at 7:12 pm

    Sorry por no poder haber estado en la celebración, tenía una reunión al mismo momento… pero felicidades por haber mantenido la fecha de inicio del Ciclo 10, ¡gran esfuerzo!

    Reply

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