[asac] [almanews] October 2000 Monthly Report

[Carolyn White]

ALMA U.S. Monthly Report
October 2000

At the meeting of the ALMA Coordinating Committee (ACC) on October 13,
2000 in Paris, Mr. Takayoshi Seiki, Director of the Research Institutes
Division of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and
Culture was invited to address the ACC. Mr. Seiki distributed a prepared
statement in which he formally records the interest of Monbusho in being a
third, equal, partner in the ALMA Project. His statement that Monbusho
will use its best efforts to secure funding for ALMA is identical to the
status of the commitments made so far by the U.S. and Europeans.

The ACC drafted a response which makes the following points: 1) It warmly
welcomes Mr. Seiki's statement; 2) It affirms the desire of the American
and European partners to work with Japan in common pursuit of a successful
ALMA Project; and 3) It sets up a process tying confirmation of the
tripartite project to an expansion of the ACC that will include members
from Japan.

The ACC also endorsed a recommendation by the ALMA Executive Committee
(AEC) to organize the international project using an Integrated Product
Team (IPT) approach. IPTs are an established means of managing complex
tasks that span organizational and geographic boundaries. They are well
suited to the ALMA Project as they provide a means of bringing together
the necessary resources under common technical leadership without
requiring that those resources be part of a single organization. The AEC
is currently using this approach to complete a detailed Management Plan
that will be presented to the ACC for approval.

Programmatically, the project continues to make important progress across
the entire WBS. Details of progress are reported in Section 4. Some of the
highlights include:

* The antenna contractor for the prototype antenna being procured by AUI
for the ALMA Project, Vertex Antenna Systems, LLC, is on-track to hold its
Critical Design Review (CDR) in November. 

* With agreements on requirements and implementation decisions for the
production front ends, work is accelerating on the design. A PDR on the
production front end is now planned for February. 

* The design was completed for the data transmission protocol of the fiber
optic link that carries information from each antenna. Detailed design
of the embedded logic to implement the protocol is already under
way.

* A Critical Design Review for the holography system was held. Holographic
measurements of the prototype antenna's panel surface accuracy will be
the primary means of demonstrating compliance with contract
specifications.


Full Monthly Report is Available at

   http://www.alma.nrao.edu/library/nsfreport/nsfoct.pdf


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