After a short break to celebrate the New Year, the drilling and deployment teams completed the sixth string deployment. Firn drilling for the seventh hole began on January 7. The pattern of drilling and deploying two holes in succession, then taking a break before starting the next deployment has proved to be an effective strategy this season.
By January 6 all old and new surface cables for this season were installed in the new IceCube Lab-a full week ahead of schedule. All new surface cables for this season were installed in their surface junction boxes. Connections for and from nearly all of the IceTop stations scheduled for this season are also complete. The consequence of moving the cables to the new IceCube lab meant that all of the data acquisition was temporarily suspended. Major updates and upgrades to the computing and data acquisition system are underway as part of the start-up of the IceCube lab.
DOM testing continues according to schedule, providing enough DOMs for at least 12 strings this season.
Twenty Freeze control units have been installed in the IceTop tanks. Freeze control enables the ice to freeze clearly, without bubbles. Sixteen tanks were filled with water and fourteen tanks acquired sunshades.