Following up on Bob Blum’s note last week about power, cooling and communications, here’s a closer look at what the team on Cerro Pachón has been doing and where things stand as of September 11. Although we are still off sky, the summit team is working hard to get through the previously planned tasks for this year’s scheduled downtime.
Power. The site’s 750 kVA generator was brought up and took over the load on September 2, and we’ve had 24/7 generator power since. A rented backup unit was delivered, tested and connected to the summit grid this week, which let us take the main generator down for scheduled maintenance without interrupting the facility. Neighboring observatories pitched in — SOAR brought a generator up from Cerro Tololo, and Gemini helped unload the rental.
Cooling. The facility glycol chillers are recirculating and cooling actively, and are now connected to HVAC monitoring and the building management system — which matters nearly as much as the cooling itself, since it means we can see their status and trends rather than infer them. The cooling loops and the computer-room AC units behaved as expected throughout the generator work. Camera cryogenic and refrigeration work has been running in parallel, with flushing stations connected, and the team will continue purging the systems next week.
Communications and computing. The La Serena–Summit link is back, a contractor verified and realigned the backup microwave antennas, and Wi-Fi is available through most of the site. Computer racks on several levels are energized, the webcam systems are back, and the data center has completed a partial startup. Internet to the summit is restored but not yet at full bandwidth, and the control system is still down pending a full startup and checkout of the summit data center.
Dome and mechanical work. This week also marked the return of the dome contractor to the site, and have made progress on the light/wind screen. The Rubin team also are proceeding with general maintenance activities and remediations on the dome and associated subsystems as well as installing the next set of louver actuators, above the rear access door.
What’s next. The maintenance downtime we had planned before the storm officially begins September 14. The open questions now are less about whether individual systems will start and more about bringing them up deliberately when needed and keeping them online — that is what we will be watching over the coming weeks. We don’t have a return-to-sky date yet; as Bob said, we expect a clearer picture soon and will share it here.
Thanks to everyone on the summit and in La Serena putting in long days on this. Access has stayed good and the pace has picked up noticeably.