Subaru Telescope New Development Group
Iwata explained the current funding status of PFS, the responsibility of the PFS project office (PFSPO; led by Kavli IPMU, Univ. of Tokyo) and NAOJ, and the expected PFS commissioning plans. He stated that Subaru Telescope requests the PFSPO to consider the possibility of installing PFS spectrographs on the TUE-IR floor after removing FMOS spectrographs. Subaru Telescope prefers this plan with following reasons: - to mitigate work overload during the construction and commissioning phases of PFS and beyond. Subaru Telescope is going to put more emphasis on survey-type observations, and in order to achieve that, we cannot keep all the instruments currently available with limited resources. - Instead of adding new floor on M3-IR, cost reduction about 1M USD or more. - Making a new floor on M3-IR would have significant interference with operations of NsIR. Currently PFSPO is trying to find other funding sources and additional partners. Their target date for the engineering first light is FY2017. In order to make TUE-IR floor available in accordance with their plan, FMOS spectrographs should be removed in late 2015. So there is a possibility of FMOS decommission after S15A. Note that the schedule depends on the status of the PFS project, and Subaru Telescope will not start the floor modification process unless PFSPO has more soild plan to complete the PFS instrument. Q: when is the critical time to determine the schedule? A: During 2014 there should be updates on the funding status for PFS, and we should decide whether FMOS needs to be decommissioned by the end of S15A before the call for proposals (August 2014).