The LS1 team will be popping the champagne on Tuesday 27 May, celebrating the completion of the consolidation of the splices in the framework of the SMACC project.

"It has been a long journey into the heart of the LHC, tackling over 27,000 shunts*," says Luca Bottura, TE-MSC Group leader. "We are happy that the final train has, at last, reached its rest station, and look forward to sending it on many new adventures," say Frédéric Savary, TE-MSC Large Magnet Facility Section leader, and Jean-Philippe Tock, SMACC Project leader.

Also in the LHC, pressure tests in Sector 1-2 – the third sector to be tackled – are almost complete. The temperature in Sector 6-7 is around 100K and it will be accessible again from next week.

As for the SPS, all the LSS1 beam elements excluding one monitor are back in position. Vacuum teams are now working hard in order to be ready on time; they will have six weeks before access to the SPS ends.

Elsewhere in the accelerator complex, hardware commissioning for the PS was completed on Thursday and the machine was handed over to OP for cold checks today, Friday 23 May. Cold checks are likewise under way in the PS Booster. Work is also going well in the AD, where RF commissioning has begun, and in LEIR, where hardware commissioning is in progress.