The telecon covered 3 main topics: an up-date on the status of the project relative to NSF; the European and Japanese collaborations; and mechanisms for scientific input during the design and development phase. In the following I will try to summarize the main points as I understand them.

NSF
As I think most of us know, $9M was appropriated last Oct., but this money has not yet been turned over to the project. The main reason for this is that NSF has had a number of changes at the senior level, including the director. NSF management wants to know more about the MMA project and to maintain tighter oversight than in the past. They have, therefore appointed a standing committee to oversee the budget, personnel, timeline, etc. of the project. This committee will report to the top management of NSF. The members of this committee are: Dan Weedman (chair), Gordon Chinn, John Mather, Gary Sanders, Domenich Tenerelli, Bob Wilson, and Jaap Baars. NRAO was asked to make a presentation of the MMA project on 23 Feb. to this committee and to couch it in terms of a stand-alone US project, as the committee had some concerns about the European and/or Japanese collaborations either falling through or causing long delays. NRAO put together a plan consisting of 30 or more 10m antennae, with personnel, budget, etc. During the D&D phase they would build a prototype with Rxs at 30 GHz (for holography), 90 GHZ (to test fast switching) and 230 GHz (to test the SIS receivers). An executive summary of the committee report was strongly supportive of the project. The report itself was expected to appear about the end of March, but has not yet been released. [Presumably, this bizarre request to present the project as a stand-alone project does not mean that a collaboration cannot go forward, but I find it strange that the NSF, who initially imposed the requirement for a partnership, now seems to be ignoring that mandate.] NRAO hopes that it will be possible to begin hiring people for the project by 1 June. The plan is to bring 45-50 people aboard with about half from present NRAO personnel and about half new people. BIMA and OVRO will each supply work equivalent to 4 FTEs; these positions will be counted among the total 45-50 persons. Check the NRAO, MMA web pages for details.

Collaboration

A. Japan
The economy in Japan is not good and the Japanese observatories had a 20% cut in their materials and supplies budget last year. The LMSA project cannot be started until completion of the Subaru Telescope, the Nobeyama Up-grade, and the VERA project. The earliest possible start date for the LMSA is 2003. The Japanese astronomers are still interested in joining the MMA/LSA project later on when they have money to bring to the project. They have suggested adding some antennae to the array, adding 350 micron receivers, and perhaps a correlator for the combined array as their contribution.

B. Europe
There have been numerous meetings of the management and technical groups since last Nov., but apparently some differences still exist on antenna size and receiver design. The Europeans would like to have fewer but larger antennae (12m) and NRAO is working on a 10m design. The Europeans are skeptical that an 8 GHz instantaneous IF bandwidth receiver with two polarizations can be built with a competitively low system temperature and are working on a DSB 4 GHz IF receiver. Peter Shaver and Roy Booth are working on a feasibility study to merge or join the MMA and LSA which they will submit to ESO for consideration.

Basically, the present situation is that both sides are approaching the project as two equal but separate partners. That is, each side will contribute 1/2 of the hardware in all aspects of the project. At some point, the two antenna designs will be compared and the best aspects of each design will be incorporated into a design that can be submitted to contractors. The receivers will be dealt with in a similar manner. The parallel but equal philosophy is expected to extend on to the operations phase where each side will contribute its 50% of the cost and each side will have its own time allocation committee.

At the moment, NRAO is going ahead with its separate (US only) technical committees and apparently the Europeans are doing the same, but there are overt efforts to keep each other informed of developements and decisions.

Scientific Input during the D & D Phase
During the D & D phase, situations will surely arise where trade-offs will have to be made due to cost and/or technical limitations. Some of these trade-offs may affect the scientific capability of the facility. In these cases, there should be a mechanism to make the community aware of the issues and to provide a way for input to be made. A project book will be put on the web which will permit everyone to follow the project as it progresses, but it seems unlikely that this will provide an adequate mechanism for the cases mentioned above. Also, a broad email appeal is difficult to get people to focus on and respond to. A small scientific advisory committee (which also includes the MDC) to the scientific project manager was mentioned as a possibility. In addition, more frequent consultations with and meetings of the MAC were mentioned as a means of scientific input.

THE NEXT TELECON WILL BE ON 17 JUNE AT 12 NOON EST.