CERN AMS-02 control centre begins operations
A month after the successful installation of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) on the International Space Station (ISS), the AMS Payload Operation and Control Centre (POCC) began operation from a specially constructed building on CERN’s Prévessin site on 24 June. The POCC will control AMS-02 for its entire lifetime.
Data-taking started soon after AMS-02 was installed on the ISS on 19 May, when the spectrometer began detecting cosmic rays at a rate of about 50 million a day. With the detector operational, the AMS team was able to transfer the POCC successfully from the Johnson Space Center in Houston to the new building at CERN.
The experiment is controlled from the POCC round the clock. Each subsystem has a dedicated monitor desk and each is devoted to data flow and to the command function – the only position that can issue commands to be uploaded to AMS-02 from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. The spectrometer provides a continuous flow of data at a rate of about 10 Mbps, which requires on-line storage, monitoring and processing. While one team takes shifts for monitoring the operation of the experiment in space, another ensures that data are properly processed by a cluster of computers at CERN, before distribution to regional centres for specific, detector-related analysis and calibration.
The POCC started operation at CERN a day after a visit by Charles Bolden, a former shuttle astronaut and current NASA administrator, and Saul Gonzalez of the US Department of Energy. Bolden had been invited to visit the centre by Sam Ting, principal investigator for AMS-02, which had made its journey to the ISS aboard the last flight of the NASA space shuttle Endeavour (CERN Courier July/August 2011 p23). While at CERN, Bolden, who had piloted the space shuttle Discovery into orbit with the Hubble telescope in the payload bay, had a chance encounter with an old acquaintance, Claude Nicollier, Switzerland’s first astronaut. Nicollier took part in several shuttle flights, including Endeavour’s mission to correct Hubble’s faulty optics. He was at CERN to give a colloquium on "Hubble, the astronomer, the telescope, the results".
India sets up first ALICE Centre
A dedicated centre for data monitoring and analysis for the ALICE experiment at the LHC was inaugurated at the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Kolkata, on 16 June. The new ALICE Centre will allow experts to attend to detector components remotely and extend the capability of Tier-II and Tier-III computing with direct connection to CERN.
The facility at VECC will also provide an excellent environment for training new students and postdocs, preparing them for shift duty in the ALICE Control Room at CERN – mandatory for all collaboration members. The new centre currently contains two workstations for control-system and data-acquisition monitoring; two screens with wireless internet for displaying the ALICE run status and the LHC status; and several computers for use with monitoring and analysis programs. The centre will also provide a dedicated conference facility, so attending the daily ALICE co-ordination meetings, for example, will now become easier.
The inauguration took place on the anniversary of the foundation day of VECC, with several dignitaries from the Indian physics community in attendance. Paolo Giubellino and Jurgen Schukraft – the current and former spokespeople of the ALICE collaboration – joined via Skype from the ALICE Control Room, together with Indian colleagues at CERN.
Intel ISEF Special Award winners visit CERN
In June, 12 pre-college students visited CERN as winners of the CERN Special Award at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2011. The Intel ISEF is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition, offering a yearly forum for more than 1500 high-school students from 65 countries to showcase their independent research tackling challenging scientific questions. The organizer, Society for Science & the Public, is in partnership with Intel and dozens of other corporate, academic, government and science-focused sponsors, to reward the best students, who are all winners of national competitions.
The CERN Special Award was established in 2009, when Craig Barrett, Intel’s chair of the board at the time, visited the laboratory as part of Intel’s partnership in CERN openlab. Barrett and Wolfgang von Rüden, former head of the Information Technology Department, defined the award as a five-day trip to CERN for 12 students, co-funded by CERN and Intel. The award, which has proved immensely popular, is now in its third year.
The winners this year are: Arjun Aggarwal, David Alexandre Joseph Campeau, Brian Ronal Graham, Emil Timergalievich Khabiboulline, Jayanth Krishnan, Pratheek Nagaraj, Nicholas James Nothom, Sahir Raoof, Kamal Shah, Andrey Sushko, Aishwarya Ananda Vardhana and Nicole Yeechi Tsai. Each applicant underwent a thorough selection process and had to excel in an online test before being reviewed at the fair in Los Angeles by von Rüden and Albert Pace from CERN. The final selection was based on their evaluation of the students’ projects and on individual interviews.
At CERN the students visited the LHC and enjoyed presentations from various prominent physicists and engineers. They particularly appreciated a few hours of individual coaching by a scientist on a topic of their choice. Visits to Geneva, the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne and the region were also part of their programme.
Intel and CERN have built a strong partnership since the start of CERN openlab in 2001 (CERN Courier October 2003 p31). Intel not only collaborates on computing projects but also supports the CERN openlab Summer Student Programme. Indeed, after just one year at university, one of the 2010 ISEF award winners qualified to join this programme.