[mmaimcal] Announcement From Fred Lo and Ade Russell

[Al Wootten]

Today at approximately 9:30AM Eastern, ALMA Director Thijs de Graauw, 
and the NA ALMA Project Director, Adrian Russell, signed the conditional 
acceptance agreement for the first Vertex Antenna.

The acceptance of the first Vertex antenna comes after a huge amount of 
very hard work by a lot of people under the leadership of Jeff Zivick. 
We want to extend our heartiest congratulations to them and all others 
who helped make this possible.   They have done NRAO and ALMA proud.

The acceptance is conditional, and more work will be carried out on a 
different antenna to investigate further the offset pointing & tracking, 
and to take more data on the surface to allow a better extrapolation of 
the data to the most extreme cold temperatures that antenna will face.


Fred K. Y. Lo, NRAO Director
Adrian Russell, NA ALMA Project Director

The antenna has been moved to Pad 3 at the OSF TB for further tests, to 
begin as soon as practical.

Clear skies,
Al