The Project Manager's
Corner: Toward Implementing TMTApril 2007
We are now about 60% through the Design Development Phase of
TMT and we are planning the implementation of TMT. We know enough
about the design and requirements, the cost and schedule, and
we are in the final year of narrowing the site choice. A growing
focus is planning the mobilization on a site, the remaining
design and development, and starting industrialization by producing
TMT components. Our vision is to initiate work on a site in
about two years.
We have written many times about the measurements being made
on the 5 candidate sites to define the different site qualities
that enable or limit astronomy observing. Already the data sets
offer a confirmation that our candidate sites in Chile, Hawaii
and Mexico are all excellent, but different in specific qualities.
We have developed an ever more sophisticated toolkit for evaluating
the data from the sites and comparing the features that relate
to astronomy. This is a process that is being done in 3- month
intervals looking at successively more complete sets of data
and employing our Science Advisory Committee (SAC) to assess
the astronomy impact. This summer we will produce a comprehensive
report combining all of the analyses and we will hold our first
external review of the site testing. This process has been closely
held because the process is necessarily competitive between
the sites and their host communities. But once completed, with
a site selected in 2008, the data sets will go through final
peer review and quality checks and be published as an asset
for the astronomy community and builders of future telescopes.
We have already written in this column about the refinements
and value engineering carried out on our design since last fall.
And we have described the consolidation of the new design, and
the revised cost and schedule development. As I write this column,
most of the engineers in the project are engaged in a two day
review of our technical design requirements and of the design
architecture, the main design choices. Later this week, we will
hold a review of our operations plan for TMT. This is another
essential element in defining our vision for implementing this
great observatory.
The design and prototyping tasks are now focused on the final
two years leading to initiating construction. In the next few
months we will describe steps taken in qualifying mirror glasses,
further primary mirror fabrication tasks and other critical
path items.
An important part of the past 6 months has been a refinement
of our early light instrument suite and we have consulted several
times with our SAC on this refinement. An important next step
is to reach out to the broadest possible astronomy community
and engage in a workshop on TMT science and the instrument capabilities
that are planned and desired. In this Newscast, Betsy Barton,
a member of our SAC from UC Irvine, announces a broad TMT Science
Workshop to be held this summer to focus on this engagement
with the astronomy community. Readers may recall that our instrument
design studies were initiated by a call to the entire North
American instrument design community. This led to a dozen instrument
and adaptive optics design studies. The fruits of that work
are now being taken back to the community in preparation for
the closing phase of TMT design development.
This summer, TMT will bring together our plan for implementing
TMT. An external review will assess the plan. This will provide
guidance as we move to the final two years of design development.
It will lay the foundation for confident site selection and
defining the mobilization for the next phase. |
