2025-03-13 Meeting notes

1:00

Words from John

John

• Had SSC and board meetings, but could not attend.

  • In D.C. rather than the SSC - major takeaway: no reason to believe federal funding will currently change for us. NASA leadership seems not to be worried about that for Keck. Senior leadership has contingency plans though just in case. Main sources of worry are if cost cutting affects universities.

  • Will be in D.C. pretty much every month until July. Working closely with partners at NASA. Government budget in talks to fund federal government at 2024 rate. Government shutdown would not be a huge effect on us, mostly Gemini.

  • Carlos: proposed 50% budget cut for science program at NASA? This is just proposed, no guarantee that large of a cut will happen. Would likely affect Earth Science more than astrophysics. NASA also has contingencies and wide support. NSF is more at risk, proposed cut for NSF is much worse. Could affect proposals, but wont affect our operations.

  • Randy: DKIST and Rubin and ALMA and IRTF? Operations are like a contract. They will continue to be funded, likely newer grants will be cut instead. NSF will likely get a 20% cut which wont affect operations as much as grants. DOE is also paying for Rubin. Scary, yes. Cause for panic, no. More worried about IRTF than Keck.

  • Congress is concerned about how the chaos affects us thankfully.

    • congress holds the purse, they can refuse the budget and do what they want

• Q&A

  • Percy: NOIRLab doesn't offer Keck time anymore? They had 40 nights over a few years, and those nights have expired unfortunately. They do have SCALES time, but that wont be up until SCALES is completed.

  • Randy: Major SSC outcomes? Science reviews: are the science cases and science requirements for LRIS and WFI compelling? LRIS2 has compelling science but needs to tighten up the science cases. WFI - wanted more but didnt say stop work, write key science cases. There will not be nights offered for WFI design work. WFI will likely be mostly Australia funded.

  • Rosalie: SCALES said they cant use NIRC2 coronagraphs. SSC decision that they cannot use them? They were told to have a quote/estimate as a backup and there is a decision to be made by the directors. Directors have not made that call yet. SCALES has perhaps mischaracterized where things are at?

1:25

Words from Jim

Jim

• Grab bag

  • Pier repair started

  • KPF service

  • OSIRIS warming

  • MOSFIRE CSU still down, working with BenM for more resources

  • K1AO /kroot update

  • K2AO back on-sky with OCAM2k

  • ESI remaining cold

  • DEIMOS rotator chain break--fixed? Carlos: running a procedure to rebalance the rotator, hasnt been done in a long time. When turning the rotator with a computer bypass, not paying attention to soft limit switch and made it all the way to the hard stop. Cable wrap was not broken thanks to instrument limits. Master link on the chain broke and master rotator stopped. Was replaced with a spare yesterday and everything is back to normal. Instrument incident report submitted.

  • NIRES readout and rotator issues. Josh: possibly replaced today, reasons for optimism

• 5 year plan campus visits

• Andy Skemer here next Tue/Wed?

• Bogie work on K2: reduced speed yesterday due to pulling one bogie out- put replacement in today and up speed. Updated design, since first design was prone to failure. All are updated in K1. Next bogie replacement is next Wednesday.

• Randy: pier repair going as expected? Yes so far! “good rhythm”. Heat blankets go on saturday or sunday. Dust monitoring happening with no cause for alarm so far.
  
  

1:42

Instrument Disk Usage

• Both lrismonored and napili have had their root partition filled recently

  • Preliminary work for currently unapproved ECR

1:43

SA Hiring update

• Panel interviews complete - 9 people

• Asking to bring in 5 for 2 positions

  • 2 of 5 are currently on island

• Administrative assistant - panel interviews happening now. 4/6 outstanding candidates.

1:45

Team Keck

• Team Keck Deadline April 7th

• Randy: extending NIRSPAO? after november need a backup program but for now it can be requested.

1:47

keanahaki retirement

Jim

Computer Support is ready to turn off keanahaki

Some accounts for instruments still have crons running--mostly conk and update_config_files

• hires

• mosfire - also has temp monitor

• esi

• k2nirc

• nirspec

• kcwi

• kics

1:49

Inst Checkouts

Jim

UNO-driven

• Add a step to instrument release

  • Release to SA - “instrument release”

  • Released for Observing

  • Telescope Release

• Want consistent reporting, what we mean by “Ready”

• Randy to test

  • Contact each SA to see where things are with instruments. Then follow up testing.

  • AO: checking out both instrument and AO system that day.

  • Rosalie: Some instruments require extra steps when they are installed again. KCWI for example.

  • SA on support will be responsible person for software or manual flag, so they can say if it’s okay for day crew to leave. Script will need to be used by a variety of people.

“UNO is coming…”

2:00

UNO Update

Carolyn

• Phase 1 operations. UNO tools should be used.

• Close to moving to Phase 2 operations, everything is done and everything released for OA.

  • run at least 6 months

  • To get there, roll out autonomous facility protection. Big release yesterday, daytime testing end of month. Engineering night on K2 on the 8th for release.

  • April 18th phase 2 readiness review, internal only review

  • Phase 3, no one up at the summit, maybe some oncall support

    • Need external review before phase 3.

2:10

Pau

Next meeting lead: Rosalie!