The March meeting led to a development plan that would allow to get to a fully operational array, such as described in the Jean-Marie's paper, going through 3 distinct phases6, each an accomplishment in its own right.
Phase I requires to inject the light from the various adaptive optics systems (each with its peculiarities) into the single mode fibers. Measurements will include coupling efficiency and stability, providing useful feedback to the observatories in terms of temporal image stability, and vibration feedback. If possible, we also hope to be able to perform a polarization study, which some observatories might find useful. During the same period, the scientific objectives will need to be developed and Phase II will be detailed. We expect to have accomplished Phase I by the end of 2001.
The goal of Phase II is to obtain fringes between two telescopes (on one of the shortest baselines) and to demonstrate scientific interest. This implies some crucial technological demonstrators, such as light transport through single mode fibers, and some form of delay line (fibered, reflective, multiple pass?). In any case Phase II is a demonstrator (both technological and scientific) for financing of the entire array.
The fully operational array is the final goal of Phase III.