Forty-six IceCube people are at the South Pole Station. Cargo deliveries continue on schedule.
The first hole of the season was drilled this week and string installation was completed on December 15. Drilling of hole number one, location 58, was started at 6:28 am on December 11. The weight stack was removed and the hole was completed at 9:10 am on December 14. String 58 was installed by approximately 4:00 am on December 15. String installation was completed in 12 hours and 40 minutes. The target hole lifetime was 37 hours.
Drilling of hole number two at location 67 commenced on December 16. Main hole drilling started at 9:30 am on December 17.
Movement of computer racks, DOM hubs, and patch panels into the ICL was completed this week. The task of connecting this equipment has started and remains on schedule. A test of the system to pull surface cables into the ICL was performed. This test run revealed several minor problems with the originally designed hardware and is being retrofitted before real surface cables are pulled into the lab. Another test run is scheduled for next week to check out the modified hardware.
The last of the IceTop trenches for this season were filled with tanks and their DOMs were installed during the past week. The surface junction boxes for each of the trenches have been placed and are now ready to be connected. The freeze control units are now being calibrated.
A team of IceCube and RPSC evaluated the procedures to install the surface cables in the ICL. Five actions were generated, one for IceCube and four for RPSC, completion of which should allow successful cable pull. Completion is expected late Monday. Upon successful completion of procedure testing, actual surface cables will be pulled into the ICL. The ICL cable effort is now one week behind schedule.
All racks are in final locations in the ICL, with power to all but 1 rack. Power to the final rack should be established in the coming week. All computers, network devices, and GPS distributions are in final rack locations, and 75% have had internal rack cabling completed. Inter-rack cabling (KVM, network, and GPS distribution) will be finished in the coming week. The network transition from the Temporary Counting House (TCH) to the ICL will begin the morning of Dec 18 at South Pole. This includes transition of network services on the SPS and SPSN (South Pole Support Network). TCH operations were halted December 17 for the transition.
Recently deployed string 58 has been connected into the Surface Junction Box (SJB) and DOM connectivity has been tested with the new Quad Connectivity Tester (QCT) from within the TICL. All DOMs indicate proper connections and the SJB for string 58 can be buried. Surface to DOM cable is ready for the next deployment.