Increased drilling efficiency saved approximately 26,000 gallons of fuel.

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1 IceCube Project Monthly Report January 2010 Accomplishments Drilling and string installation ended ten days early this season with twenty strings installed, including the DeepCore strings. This work was completed without any reportable injuries for the second straight year. Increased drilling efficiency saved approximately 26,000 gallons of fuel. The drilling equipment was prepared for an efficient startup next season. All firn holes, roughly the first fifty meters of depth, necessary for the final season were pre-drilled and the three generators refurbished. All 20 new strings are commissioned for the 79-string run configuration. Collaboration members are calibrating, testing and verifying the new configuration. IceCube was invited to present ongoing and new outreach and education projects at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Stockholm. Cost & Performance Data Through December

2 Cost and Schedule Performance The project is 94.7% complete. Remaining contingency is $7.6 million. There were no changes to the NSF MREFC funding requirements of $242.1 million since the project baseline was established in /10 String Installation Status December String# Total# December 2009 January String# Total# January String# Total# A total of 20 strings were installed this season, achieving the stretch goal for the season ten days ahead of schedule. UW and the IceCube collaboration requested and received NSF approval to complete the 80-string array originally proposed, along with the 6-string DeepCore array. This work will be completed within the planned contingency and no additional NSF funding was requested. The six DeepCore strings are now installed. Seven strings will remain for installation in the December The resources are in place for the successful completion of the MREFC project. Fuel consumption for drilling ran almost 20% below the quantities planned for this season. The savings are the result of more efficient drilling and drilling holes with shorter freeze-back times, typically an estimated 24 hours available to successfully install a string). The total estimated savings relative to the support plan is about 26,000 gallons. Earlier this year UW-Madison and the IceCube collaboration submitted revised budgets for M&O for FY The revisions were made in response to guidance from the NSF following discussions between NSF and the foreign funding partners. Included in the submittal were responses to the recommendations from the NSF panel that reviewed the original proposal. A supplemental request for funding to cover M&O activities from April 1, 2010 September 30, 2010 will be submitted in February. 2

3 The schedule variance at the end of December 2009 was $64.9k (compared to -$82.9k last month). The cost variance at the end of December 2009 was $1,248k. This favorable variance is due to lower labor and on-ice support costs for Raytheon Polar Services Corporation and the Air National Guard in FY2010. In addition, training costs for drilling (Implementation) were less than budgeted due to the high retention rates for experienced drilling personnel. Contingency Status and Plans One change request was implemented during December 2009, RPSC and ANG FY2009 Closeout, returning $788k to contingency. Change Log - IceCube Total Project Budget Baseline ($K) No. Description Approval Date Total Baseline Allocated Budget Allocated Budget Change Contingency Budget Budgeted Cost of Work Remaining NA Status as of September , ,657 6,847 17,837 CR134 Non-US contribution for Deep Core 11/25/09 279, ,626 3,969 6,847 NA Status as of October , ,626 6,847 16,577 NA CR160 NA Status as of November 2009 RPSC & ANG FY2009 Closeout and move one string to FY2011 Status as of December , ,626 6,847 15,426 01/14/10 279, , , , ,837 7,635 14,416 3

4 Risk Assessment & Potential Contingency Adjustments Item Estimate ($K) Contingency potentially required for technical, cost and schedule risks associated with the approved scope of work. Risk assessments are made at WBS-Level 4 to determine the value of the risk exposure as a percent of the cost of work remaining. $1,395 Pre-Operations costs for additional capacity to the data storage and network systems, both at the South Pole and in Madison, and for extending software development efforts. $2,500 RPSC estimate of the incremental cost of support for string installation in 2010/11. This reduction to contingency will be processed next month as a result of NSF approval to complete the 80-string array, along with the 6-string DeepCore array. $1,340 The cost to retro IceCube equipment/materials from the South Pole at the end of the project in FY2012. This is a conservative estimate. $1,050 Potential labor cost to retain experienced personnel, in particular the drilling crews, in the final year of construction. This investment will help to ensure that the final season will be as successful as in recent years. Potential exposure to higher fuel costs during the last season of drilling (FY2011). Total Available Contingency as of Dec. 31, 2009 $730 $450 $7,465 $7,635K Drill Operation and Installation Drilling continued through January, with eight additional strings bringing the season total to 20. IceCube Team Readies the Final DOM of the Season for Deployment 4

5 With the successful early completion of the drilling schedule, attention turned to winterizing the drill camp and making preparations for the next season. South Pole Drill Activities: Fuel efficiency procedures and operations continued to be implemented through January resulting on an overall savings of ~20% over the baseline support plan. No major reportable injuries for the entire season. The Enhanced Hot Water Drill was purged of water and winterized before the end of the month. Damaged equipment was packaged and shipped north for repair in the US. The Seasonal Equipment Site was left partially connected to help expedite startup activities in the season. Eight firn holes were drilled for next season, including a back-up RodWell hole. Two of the three main generators were overhauled, with the third scheduled for early February. All raw video sequences were completed for the Enhanced Hot Water Drill User Manual. South Pole Installation Activities: Deployment teams installed eight Main Cables with Digital Optical Modules (DOMs) in January. DOM testing concluded, the Optical Module Laboratory was winterized. Detector Commissioning and Verification - Twenty new strings were commissioned for Data Acquisition (DAQ) integration. The strings are freezing in and their Stage 2 geometrical calibrations are underway. Calibration is going smoothly and will be completed in February after the strings are completely frozen into the ice. Calibration and Monitoring - Work on the Standard Candle 2 comparison of data and simulation is still underway. The simulations show good overall agreement although there are some minor discrepancies under study. Data Acquisition DAQ raw data has a more efficient data format under the new software release. It has been running since January 13 th and the results are very good. The data rate was reduced from 15 MB/sec to 6.3 MB/sec without a loss of information in the DAQ data stream, a roughly 40 percent reduction. Revised projections on data rates will be presented at the annual Software & Computing Panel meeting in April During the month of January, Dave Glowacki and Sabrina Bechet deployed to South Pole to commission new strings into the DAQ. As of Feb 9, all newly installed strings were tested and integrated into the DAQ. The 59-string configuration will remain the default data-taking configuration until approximately March 23. At that time, we plan to switch all online systems to take data with the full detector, now including 79 strings and nearly 5000 channels. There will be no significant changes to DAQ operations for the 79-string run. 5

6 Detector Up-Time: 95.7% IceCube (in-ice) clean runs Up-Time: 88.7% Unscheduled Downtime: 0.7% Definition of the terms: Detector Up-Time is the percentage of the time period when the data acquisition system is acquiring data and delivering at least 500Hz of event rate. The measure includes periods in which the detector is taking data with a partial detector enabled or with light contamination from calibration sources. Clean Run Up-Time(s) is the percentage of the time period considered with routine data (standard hardware and software configurations) and the full nominal detector enabled (no contamination from light from calibration sources and no serious alerts generated by the monitoring or verification systems. The calculations are based on the Run Coordinator s judgment and are not algorithmic. Normal commissioning and calibration activities of the newly deployed strings decreased detector clean run Up-Time. This is typical during the construction and installation season. The use of in-ice light sources for string commissioning this year went particularly well and the overall reduction in clean run Up-Time was less than previous years. In December the Detector Up-Time was 97.9% [Note: An estimate of 98.1% was reported in the December monthly report since the report was submitted prior to receipt of the final pdaq log files for the month]. In January the Detector Up-Time was 95.7% and the clean run Up-Time was 88.7%. On January 8, the new version of the DOM mainboard software that improves flasher operations was deployed on all DOMs. On January 12, the external disk on the event builder node had hardware problems causing about five hours of downtime. The successful testing and deployment of Joint Event Builder/Processing and Filtering Plan A scheme was finally achieved. Data Handling - South Pole systems in the IceCube Lab began the IC59 physics operation on May 20, 2009 and continued smoothly through January. Periodic downtime for commissioning of new strings installed was addressed. The figure below shows the daily satellite data transfer rates in MBytes/day for this month. The blue is for filtered physics data, which dominates the total bandwidth, while the red and green is for data 6

7 associated with commissioning new strings. The data transfer rates volumes reported are the total amount of data transferred north by RPSC. All projects experienced low data transfer rates on 14, 22, and 24 January with IceCube placing 22 GB, 13 GB, and 5 GB on the server of each of those three days, respectively. The average daily transfer rate for January was about 58 GB/day, less than nine percent of the total physics data of 676 GB/day. Information technology work included South Pole systems upgrades to handle additional strings and increased data rate after string installation this season. Major upgrades to the data warehouse and offline-processing infrastructure were completed last month. The upgrade included commissioning of the new NPX3 compute cluster, which brings significant new and much needed processing in the data center. Online & Offline Filtering, Software & Database - The online filtering system for the IC59 run continues smoothly with daily satellite transmission of filtered data to the northern data warehouse at University of Wisconsin as logged in the figure above. With the end of the recent season and the successful installation of 20 strings, the collaboration is preparing to filter a 79-string (IC79) configuration. Filter proposals were due last month, and all areas of analysis are testing for data rates and efficiency using IC79 Monte Carlo and test data. Continued testing and major progress toward a new Data Acquisition payload structure that will lower the data size per event is underway. Final PnF/Online software for deployment in IC79 run is also being tested. Several test runs have been done, including a full 24-hour run with new payload data structure and final online filter server/client 7

8 system. This will be the final delivered major release of the PnF system in the MREFC, with remaining work to be in documentation for long-term maintenance. IceTray "v3" is now in full release, with minor changes expected for future releases. Work continues on a new packaging system for release and distribution of IceTray software to users. To streamline use on the new version, we are planning for two IceTray bootcamps in the coming year to train new students and users of the offline software analysis framework. Production processing of data is moving ahead. With final offline processing of the 40- string configuration data, completed last November. Processing of IC59 data has been extensively tested and full production has started on January 22. Simulation - Steady progress continues on improved detector simulation. Studies on the systematic error for physics analysis due to the modeling of ice properties are progressing. Several new special simulation data sets for the 40-string configuration were produced using various ice properties. The graphs below show the total worldwide simulation production jobs for the last two months. Simulation production levels continue to increase as we gain more experience with the distributed simulation production infrastructure. Simulation Production Summary for the Most Recent Four Weeks of 2010 Simulation Production Summary for the end of December 2009, and the First Week of 2010 Education and Outreach IceCube has been invited to participate in the Polar Year Oslo Science Conference held this June in Stockholm. Jim Madsen of UW River Falls will attend to present Bringing the Universe to a Broader Audience via the South Pole: The Education and Outreach Efforts of the IceCube Project. Prof. Madsen s talk will explain 8

9 IceCube s contribution to International Polar Year events, describing informal education projects and highlighting broader impacts activities. While most South Pole bloggers are summing up their experiences and heading home, one end of the season blogger was able to use her experience to connect with her daughters preschool classroom throughout her stay at the Pole. Dr. Reina Maruyama collaborated with teachers at a UW campus school in Madison to integrate her South Pole stories with polar activities for children ages two to five. Students wrote stories, investigated snow and ice, and each classroom sent a stuffed animal along with Dr. Maruyama to help the young students feel connected to the experience. Yeck Jim 2/22/10 7:39 AM Deleted: u Yeck Jim 2/22/10 7:39 AM Deleted: u Quality Assurance and Safety As the drilling season came to a close, safety activities centered on completion of safety audits and ensuring safety performance during camp close-out. Additional training on vehicle operation and cold-weather safety were completed in early January with the arrival of new IceCube personnel. As the season wound down, drilling progressed at a quick, efficient pace with no injuries. Safety audits were completed on all aspects of camp and the equipment winterization. Final inventories of safety equipment and checks on the Do Not Freeze buildings, Seasonal Equipment Site, Tower Operations Site, and IceTop concluded without incident. Upcoming IceCube Meetings and Events Season Review and Strategic Planning Meeting, UW-Madison March 18-19, 2010 Software and Computing Advisory Panel, UW-Madison April 6-7, 2010 IceCube Collaboration Meeting, Annapolis, MD May 3-7, 2010 Science Advisory Committee, Annapolis, MD May 7-8,