Icecube Project Monthly Report s1

IceCube Project Monthly Report November 2005

Accomplishments The annual IceCube construction season at the South Pole is underway. The project will conduct work at the South Pole from mid November through the first week in February 2006.

The Enhanced Hot Water Drill seasonal equipment site is in place and operational. The start of deep ice drilling is currently forecast for December 18, 2005.

The second drill tower and operations structure was constructed and will be used this season so that deployment of IceCube strings can take place concurrently with drilling activities.

An additional twenty-four IceTop tanks are located in twelve trenches with Digital Optical Modules installed. The tanks will be filled with water beginning on December 14, 2005.

The South Pole System for data handling for the 2006 is now operational in the Temporary Counting House. The system is available to the data acquisition team.

DOM testing at the South Pole in support of this season’s installation goals is well advanced with failure rates of roughly 2%.

External modifications to the permanent counting house (IceCube Laboratory) are underway and material is being staged at the Laboratory for the internal work planned for this winter.

ICEC UBE - TO TAL Co st / Sch edu le P erforman ce

100

IceC ube Project Baseline (M$)

Initial In-Ice Strings & IceTop Tanks Installed Jan-2005

Initial O perational Capability Mar-2007

Project Completion & Closeout Sep-2010

Total Project Cost $273.1

70 Value of Foreign Contributions $31.0

NSF Funding $242.1

Contingency as % of Remaining Costs 28.3% 60

# Strings/Tanks 70/140

49.1

Percent Complete 48.0

48.0% Co mplete

46.1

3&4 1&2 3&4

FY03 FY04 A-05 M-05 J-05 J-05 A-05 S-05 O-05 N-05 D-05 J-06 F-06 M-06 FY07 FY08 FY09 FY10 FY11

FY02 FY05 FY06

2.3 10.0 23.5 34.6 36.2 38.9 40.7 43.0 44.9 47.4 49.1 50.7 53.7 55.6 58.0 59.4 70.6 82.9 92.0 97.0 99.4 100.0 Scheduled %

2.3 8.9 22.3 32.9 36.0 36.8 39.2 41.3 43.6 46.5 48.0 Performed %

2.3 8.8 23.0 31.9 35.0 35.6 38.0 39.9 43.6 45.7 46.1 Cost %

Fiscal Months, Quarters & Years Cost and Schedule Performance – The project is roughly 48% complete versus the planned performance of 49.1% complete as measured using earned value techniques. The earned value measurement includes all tasks completed to date including design, development, procured materials, and the construction of the infrastructure that supports the current seasonal installation plan, e.g., the hot water drill, cargo shipments, etc. The total contingency percentage (contingency/cost-to-complete) as a function of time is shown at the end of this report.

IceCube Neutrino Observatory

Cost Schedule Status Report

1 Reporting Period Ending: 10/31/2005

Cumulative To Date (AY K$) At Completion (AY K$) Complete (%)

2 Budgeted Cost Actual Cost Variance Latest

Work Work of Work Budgeted Revised

OBS Structure L2 Scheduled Performed Performed Schedule Cost AY $s Estimate Variance Scheduled Performed Actual

PROJECT SUPPORT 15662.3 15666.3 15924.0 4.0 -257.7 30185.9 30443.6 -257.7 51.9% 51.9% 52.8%

IMPLEMENTATION 19356.4 19299.2 18885.5 -57.3 413.6 32425.6 32011.9 413.6 59.7% 59.5% 58.2%

INSTRUMENTATION 30874.7 30128.3 29821.7 -746.4 306.6 65448.0 65141.4 306.6 47.2% 46.0% 45.6%

DATA ACQUISITION 20529.4 20226.0 20578.4 -303.3 -352.4 32864.6 33217.0 -352.4 62.5% 61.5% 62.6%

DATA SYSTEMS 10527.2 9863.2 9817.3 -664.0 45.9 25017.6 24971.7 45.9 42.1% 39.4% 39.2%

DETECTOR COMM. &

7460.0 7438.0 6911.2 -22.0 526.8 18825.0 18298.2 526.8 39.6% 39.5% 36.7%

VERIFICATION

RPSC SUPPORT 12077.5 11260.0 7442.2 -817.5 3817.8 32054.5 28236.7 3817.8 37.7% 35.1% 23.2%

NSF 502.1 502.1 502.1 0.0 0.0 1263.0 1263.0 0.0 39.8% 39.8% 39.8%

Sub Total 116989.6 114383.1 109882.4 -2606.5 4500.7 238084.2 233583.5 4500.7 49.1% 48.0% 46.2%

Management Reserve

Total Contingency 34,969.1 39,469.8 4,500.7

Items Outside of Approved

Baseline

IceCube Neutrino

116,989.6 114,383.1 109,882.4 -2,606.5 4,500.7 273,053.3 273,053.3 0.0 49.1% 48.0% 46.2%

2 Observatory

Notes: 1 Incorporates approved and currently pending baseline changes.

2 Total Budget at Completion includes non-US contributions $1,283K over the amount in the post Hartill III baseline.

3 The budgeted contingency is: 28.3% of the Budgeted cost of work remaining.

Drill Construction and Operation – The hot water drill set up and commissioning for the 2005/2006 season is progressing satisfactorily. The forecast date for the start of drilling is Sunday, December 18th, one week later than the original plan. The IceCube Rod Well is operational and the commissioning of the main heating plants is underway. The second tower was constructed and will be used this year to allow the string deployment and drilling to take place concurrently. New hose is now being spooled onto the large hose reel. It is clear that the steps taken to increase the size of the drilling crews and to ensure technical depth in key areas is paying off along with the benefits of retaining almost the entire crew from last year.

A series of drilling readiness review activities were completed the weekend of December 10th including:

 Preliminary Readiness Assessment w/ IceCube Leadership – December 10th  Project Director’s Readiness Discussion w/ Drill Crew – December 11th  IceCube Open House and Tours – December 11th  Readiness Review Meeting w/ IceCube, RPSC, and NSF – December 11th

2 In addition special tours for South Pole Station emergency response personnel were conducted over that weekend. IceCube will conduct an emergency drill prior to the start of drilling. A final decision to proceed with drilling will be made once all technical work is complete and an assessment of the readiness of the drill crew is made.

During the construction and commissioning of the drill there were two incidents that warranted detailed study and documentation given the potential safety and environmental implications. The first incident was the overheating of a Rod Well System (RWS) burner. The burner was turned on when water flow was not present causing the burner to overheat. There was no permanent damage to the burner and the staff commissioning the burners responded promptly by shutting down fuel to the RWS. A detailed incident investigation was conducted and an incident report prepared that identifies root causes, findings, and recommended corrective actions. The second incident involved overfilling of the “day tank” used to distribute fuel. The system runs automatically but the high level trip failed to engage resulting in fuel spilling into the secondary basin that is designed to ensure that fuel does not spill onto the ground. Like the burner incident there were no direct adverse impacts but the critical nature of the system warranted and incident investigation and report. In both cases Raytheon and NSF were notified of the incidents.

Digital Optical Module and Cable Production Status and Plans - The status of DOM production for 2005 is provided in the chart below along with the DOM, cable, and tank production plan for 2004 – 2008. There are no major issues with instrumentation production. The plans provide for instrumentation well in advance of the installation need dates and allows the project to exploit inexpensive shipping methods.

IceCube DOM Production PY4(CY2005) - Summary Revision 7/12: Change shipping dates and quantities to more accurately reflect DOM production progress to date. DESY to keep all CAEN HV units.

1000

DOMs ready for DFL @ PSL - cumulative plan 900 DOMs ready for DFL @ DESY - cumulative plan

DOMs ready for DFL @ Swed - cumulative plan

800 DOMs ready for DFL - cumulative plan all sites DOMs ready for DFL - cumulative actual all sites

700 Summary: 1. PSL integrates 610 DOMs from 4/2 to 9/3, ships 548 DOMs (includes 16 from CY2004). 600 2. DESY integrates 160 DOMs from 4/23 to 8/6, ships 108 ( includes 12 from CY2004, hold back 64 CAEN HV units). 500 3. Sweden integrates 160 DOMs from 4/30 to 8/27, ships 144 ( includes 24 from CY2004 )

400

Quantity300 of DOMs ready for DFL

200

100

3/5/20053/12/20053/19/20053/26/20054/2/20054/9/20054/16/20054/23/20054/30/20055/7/20055/14/20055/21/20055/28/20056/4/20056/11/20056/18/20056/25/20057/2/20057/9/20057/16/20057/23/20057/30/20058/6/20058/13/20058/20/20058/27/20059/3/20059/10/20059/17/20059/24/200510/1/200510/8/2005

Week ending

3 IceCube DOM, Cable and Tank Production CY2004 - CY2008 for 80 strings installed

80 Cable Systems

60 DOMs

50 IceTop Tanks

40 Strings installed in ice at Pole

Equivalent InIce strings 30

7/24/20049/24/20041/24/20053/24/20055/24/20057/24/20059/24/20051/24/20063/24/20065/24/20067/24/20069/24/20061/24/20073/24/20075/24/20077/24/20079/24/20071/24/20083/24/20085/24/20087/24/20089/24/20081/24/20093/24/20095/24/20097/24/20099/24/20091/24/2010 11/24/2004 11/24/2005 11/24/2006 11/24/2007 11/24/2008 11/24/2009 Week ending

The production goals for this calendar year were to produce 16 surface-DOM cables, 16 surface cables, and 930 DOMs. These goals will be met.

Cargo Shipments to the South Pole – Cable shipments this season to McMurdo via ChristChurch include twelve surface cables and eight surface-to-DOM cables. An additional five surface cables and six surface-to-DOM cables will be sent directly to McMurdo on the annual supply vessel and stored at McMurdo.

There was about a week interruption in deliveries to the South Pole during early December. There are immediate impacts on the schedule for trenching due to the lack of surface cables. This has slowed progress on IceTop as the surface cables are needed to begin filling the surface tanks with water. There are also a few items that are critical for progress on the drill. The IceCube Logistics Manager, Terry Hannaford, is working with his counterparts in RPSC and NSF to ensure that IceCube priorities are adhered to the impacts of cargo delays are minimized.

Final Acceptance Testing of DOMs – The first pass yield of DOMs passing final acceptance tests in the dark freezer laboratories is routinely approaching 90% on average, a long-term goal for the project. The second pass yield is 95%. A final FAT cycle that was used to test second pass DOMs is complete and the freezer is now at room temperature. The results of this FAT cycle will be available in about one week. The delay in the analysis of the test results is due to the fact that key personnel are on travel. Hagar Landsmann recently arrived at the South Pole to test DOMs and Claire Petterson is now on traveling back after a few weeks of DOM testing at the South Pole.

4 String and IceTop Commissioning – All 76 IceCube DOMs at the South Pole are operating and reading data (60 DOMs on the string and 16 DOMs in eight surface tanks). Overall, the quality of the data from the first string and the eight IceTop tanks is very good. The IceCube scientific collaboration is evaluating data from AMANDA and the initial IceCube instrumentation. Plans are in place for verification and commissioning the strings and surface tanks that will be installed during the 2005/2006 season. The basic strategy for string commissioning is to conduct detailing performance testing on only a few strings and a minimal set of tests on the rest of the strings.

Data from the existing IceCube string is currently extracted using a test version of the data acquisition software. Recently there has been very good progress preparing the “final” data acquisition software. Modules of the software is now being uploaded onto the first string and surface computing hardware and the full software chain will be run on the South Pole System (SPS) in late December or early January. A technical review of the DAQ system is planned for early March 2006. The review will respond to the results from this coming season.

System Testing – The South Pole Test System, a mirror image of the SPS, continues to provide a critical test bed for the data acquisition and data handling software.

Data Systems – The data handling systems required for the 2005/2006 were installed in the temporary counting house (future optical module laboratory) and are now fully operational. The IceCube Laboratory or permanent counting house will be available on December 15, 2006.

Quality Assurance & Safety – There are no significant quality assurance issues to report. Hank Leweling, Safety Manager, is now at the South Pole and is conducting weekly formal inspections of the drill camp and towers. In addition there are weekly safety meetings and there is also a plan being developed for an emergency drill prior to the start of drilling. An incident report was prepared for the Rod Well System heater incident and another is being prepared for minor spill associated with the “day” fuel tank.

The monthly reports are posted at IceCube Monthly Reports. The IceCube 2005-2006 Weekly Construction Reports are posted at IceCube 2005-2006 Weekly Construction Reports .

Meetings and Events Drill Advisory Panel Meeting March 27-28, 2006 Panel Advisory Panel Meeting March 29-30, 2006 Science Advisory Committee Meeting March 30-31, 2006 IOFG April 3-7, 2006 Collaboration Meeting-Baton Rouge, LA April 10-14, 2006 NSF Annual Review May 30-June 1, 2006

5 Contingency % of ETC

30.0%

28.3%

Annual 20.0%

Baseline

Replanning

10.0%

0.0%

Feb-04 Apr-04 Jun-04 Aug-04 Oct-04 Dec-04 Feb-05 Apr-05 Jun-05 Aug-05 Oct-05

IceTop DOM installation by Tom Gaisser and Len Shulman, Bartol Research Institute.

6 Farshid Feyzi, UW Physical Sciences Laboratory, inside the IceCube drill tower during the IceCube Open house at the South Pole.

Hagar Landsmann, UW Physics, inside the IceCube DOM testing building during the IceCube Open house at the South Pole.