While the COVID-19 pandemic persists all around the world, ALMA staff at the JAO and in the regions continue to work towards bringing the array back online, with the ultimate goal to resume science operations and deliver high-quality science data to our users.

At this moment, the ALMA antennas are in the process of being powered up and inspected after having been stowed for about 300 days. The central local oscillator and the two correlators at the high site have successfully been restarted and the first antennas have been paired up to perform initial interferometric testing by science operations. On the other hand, the ALMA Regional Centers (ARCs) continue to assist ALMA users with the reduction and analysis of existing data.

While the Operations Support Facility (OSF) can now sustain a minimum number of ALMA staff, nevertheless, the way towards science observations is still long and uncertain and heavily depends on issues that may be discovered as well as on the pandemic situation in Chile and the rest of the world.