Sanford Underground Research Facility

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Sanford Lab dedicates M. Michael Rounds Operations Center

    From the Black Hills Pioneer, Aug. 21, 2021: The former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, SD was dedicated as the M. Michael Rounds Operations Center at the Sanford Underground Research Facility. The dedication event included remarks from many dignitaries including Sanford Lab Executive Director Mike Headley, who talked about the long journey it has been to support the new facility and that Sanford Lab has made great strides toward building the LBNF that will house the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment at 4,850 level, led by Fermilab.

    An orange and silver drill rig (a tractor-like apparatus with two parallel arms that reach above the cab and then make a steep diagonal to the ground) and several red and silver drill rigs sit in the foreground of a silty construction site. Other equipment is in the midground and hills filled with evergreens and blue sky above in the background.

    Construction crews start lowering equipment a mile underground for excavation for DUNE

    How do you build a ship in a bottle? Everything necessary to construct the enormous Fermilab-hosted international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment must fit down a narrow, mile-deep shaft cut through solid rock. Contractors have started the months-long process of disassembling excavation equipment and lowering it underground.

    The conveyor belt taking the rocks from the crusher to the Open Cut passes close to the town of Lead, South Dakota. Image: Fermilab

    Rock transportation system is ready for excavation of DUNE caverns

    Fermilab contractors have successfully commissioned a system that will move 800,000 tons of rock to create space for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment’s detectors in South Dakota. Excavation crews will transport the rock from a mile underground to the surface using refurbished mining infrastructure and the newly constructed conveyor system.

    One of the DUNE near detector's subdetectors, SAND, will detect neutrinos with an electronic calorimeter, which measures particle energy, and a tracker, which records particle momenta and charge. A second subdetector will use liquid argon to mimic the neutrino interactions in the far detector. The third will use gaseous argon. Working together, they will measure particles with more precision than other neutrino detectors have been able to achieve. Credit: DUNE collaboration

    Particle detector at Fermilab plays crucial role in Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment

    DUNE’s near detector, located at Fermilab, will take vital measurements of neutrino beam energy and composition before it reaches the experiment’s far detector in South Dakota. Its unmatched precision measurements will offer its own opportunities for the discovery of new physics.