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Recent Activities of the US Gemini Program (1Sep94) (from USGP, NOAO Newsletter No. 39, 1 September 1994) IR Spectrograph Procurement The United States, as a partner in the international Gemini partnership, will be making the recommendation to the Gemini Project as to whom should be contracted to build the US-allocated Near-Infrared Spectrograph. The National Science Foundation has directed the USGP to establish and manage the competitive selection process, by which this occurs. As this is a substantial award for any US institution wishing to compete and a key facility-class instrument for Gemini users, the process has undergone a great deal of review by the US Science Advisory Committee, the National Science Foundation and the Gemini Project to assure that the process is fair to all competitors and will yield the most capable scientific instrument possible. The USGP issued an Announcement of Opportunity, which was widely distributed and advertised to the US community in late May. The Announcement outlined the Spectrograph Science Requirements, defined by the international Gemini Science Committee, and programmatic issues such as the 4 year contract span. Furthermore, the Announcement described the procurement goal: to select the contractor with the most scientifically capable, high quality instrument proposal who can perform the work required (design through commissioning) for a fixed-price not to exceed the budget of $2.2 million dollars. Since we really want a Spectrograph, which under usual circumstances would cost more than this budget allows, it was decided to offer Gemini guaranteed observing time to the successful contractor to entice proposers to look for ways to subsidize or otherwise reduce the price charged to Gemini. Letters of intent to propose were solicited and the Request for Proposal was delivered in late July to those who expressed an interest. Proposals will be due in October and the successful proposer should be under contract in early 1995. The proposal evaluations and recommendation will be made by an independent committee appointed by the NSF. Outreach One of our jobs in the USGP is to keep the US astronomical community informed about the developing Gemini designs and the progress the Project is making towards actually building the two telescopes. Towards this goal, a display was presented at the Minneapolis American Astronomical Society meeting in early June which summarized the current technical and programmatic status of the Gemini Project. We look forward to having the next meeting of the AAS in Tucson in January where we plan to present an update. For those of you unable to see us in person at the meetings you can now access information about the Gemini Project on their recently opened NCSA Mosaic home page on the World Wide Web. The USGP is working to add our own home page, accessible thru hyperlink from the Gemini and NOAO home pages, which will carry billboard style recent announcements and other current features. The locator for the Gemini home page is: http://www.gemini.edu/ To support those in the US community interested in more detail about Gemini designs and operations plans, we announced an opportunity for a limited number of persons to attend the first Gemini System Review. This System Review, held for three days in late July, focused on system-level performance and interactions of the various subsystems as well as operational scenarios. A review team was assembled from within and outside of the Project and consisted of both engineers and scientists. The Project intends to have two of these large reviews a year. Kathy Wood
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