Running Time - 2:52

Albrect Karle, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin, Madison

It’s a very special day because it is the end of a very long effort. Many people have been working very hard on it. Here on the Ice, we have about fifty people for three months working around the clock in shifts. The drillers did a remarkable job setting this up and developing the technology to drill so fast and so deep.

Dennis Duling
Drill Manager

We started about seven years ago. We’re drilling a kilometer grid. We are going down 2500 meters, drilling a hole about point six meters across and we set a string of DOMs in there, which are neutrino detectors. And we are on our final hole today that we are drilling and the array will be completed.

Gary Hill
University of Wisconsin

It is amazing we have been able to do it. Back in the AMANDA days we wouldn’t have thought it'd be possible to put eighty-six strings in in that sort of time. So it’s sort of taking, looking, and standing on the ice here now looking out at the flags laid out on the ice - seeing how big the Array is, it’s really amazing that we were actually able to do it.

Dennis Duling
Drill Manager

Bitter sweet, glad, damn glad it’s done. I mean this is a lot of work. It’s tiring. You know, it is a good hard pace throughout the season. Uh, but you know what? I am going to hate to see it end, because like I said I am working with the best people on earth.

Albrect Karle, Ph.D.
University of Wisconsin, Madison

It’s quite gratifying to see that everything in the last few years, we have been making such a steady process, and a safe installation here, and we are seeing already really excellent data and the collaboration of many working groups. We are analyzing the data and papers are being written.

Gary Hill
University of Wisconsin

Now we look forward to the future and see what the data comes from it. So yeah, it is a mixture of emotions, but positive.

Dr. Vladimir Papitashvili
National Science Foundation

It’s a real life long almost, it’s a seven years, and when you understand that it is coming to the end you have a sorry, but at the same time you have a joy. So it was not easy even easy to say “hey, good work”, it was coming from my heart congratulating them.

I want to express my real, you know, admiration to the collaboration of the University of Wisconsin as the lead institution and other partners. It was hard. It was a ten years long road to that point. And um, it’s hard though just to find out words, but except saying that you are a great team, and we are very happy that project is successful and coming to its end, and then starting, we’ll be starting a new life as a detector, cubic kilometer detector. Congratulations.