Array Recovery Status Update

Dear colleagues,

While the COVID-19 pandemic persists all around the world, ALMA staff at the JAO and in the regions continue to work towards bringing the array back online, with the ultimate goal to resume science operations and deliver high-quality science data to our users.

At this moment, the ALMA antennas are in the process of being powered up and inspected after having been stowed for about 300 days. The central local oscillator and the two correlators at the high site have successfully been started and the first antennas have been paired up to perform initial interferometric testing by science operations.

The Operations Support Facility (OSF) can now sustain a minimum number of ALMA staff. Nevertheless, the way towards science observations is still long and uncertain and heavily depends on issues that may be discovered as well as on the pandemic situation in Chile and the rest of the world.

The ALMA Regional Centres (ARCs) continue to assist ALMA users with the reduction and analysis of existing data through virtual face-to-face (f2f) support, in addition to answering the usual Helpdesk queries. If you have any questions, want to sign up for a virtual f2f visit, or have comments or concerns related to the situation at ALMA, please contact the ALMA Helpdesk at https://help.almascience.org.

All ALMA staff wish you and your families to remain safe and healthy.