The US HL-LHC AUP effort successfully defended its plans to DOE in December 2018, and was baselined in February 2019. This major step provides the funding agency approval of the total estimated Project cost.

The most significant advancement has been the test of the third US-AUP full size magnet (MQXFA03). It reached nominal gradient with limited training and is the first magnet ready to be included in the first cold mass to be installed in the IT-String test.

After the successful tests of MQXFA03 and MQXFA04, that allowed last year to obtain the approval of the US contribution by the DOE, MQXFA05 has been tested in May 2021.