12 May 2009
Budget issues were a problem for the 2009 fiscal year which began on 1 October of last year. We began this fiscal year with a Continuing Resolution budget with spending levels held flat from the previous year. This led to a delayed start of Run9 as funds made available by the Continuing Resolution were not sufficient to sustain the planned 21 week run. The run began on 1 February with the hope that the budget would be favorably resolved by mid-April before our operations funds were exhausted. The budget was indeed favorably resolved in early April and came with sufficient funds to allow an extension of the run through June. The run began with 250 GeV x 250 GeV polarized proton collisions followed in mid-April with 100 GeV x 100 GeV polarized proton collisions. This was the first year of physics running with 250GeV x 250 GeV polarized protons. The 250 GeV x 250 GeV commissioning was a success with first collisions achieved 2 weeks into the run. A short physics run followed before switching to 100 GeV x 100 GeV collisions. Both the STAR and PHENIX experiments are once again operational for this run.
The eighteenth round of Radiobiology experiments (NSRL-09B) began in March and will end today with the nineteenth round (NSRL09B) set to begin tomorrow. These experiments make use of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) that uses beams from the Booster synchrotron to study radiation effects for the NASA space program.
Scheduling Physicist web page - FY2009
Status Updates (RHIC Broadcast)
Phil Pile (pile@bnl.gov)