Overview of progress on the UCNtau Experiment

The UCN$\tau$ experiment measures the free neutron lifetime by trapping Ultracold Neutrons (UCN) in a magneto-gravitational trap. Neutrons are confined below by a magnetic field from a permanent magnet Halbach array and above by gravity and undergo $\beta$ decay. The trap is filled through a removable trap section and the surviving UCN population is measured to extract the trap lifetime. Spectral cleaning of potentially escaping UCN is achieved using a movable plane of polyethylene that up-scatters neutrons to thermal energy and out of the trap. An active \textit{in-situ} detector is used to measure the neutron population. The detector uses $^{10}$B coated ZnS:Ag to detect UCN. The goal of the UCN$\tau$ experiment is to perform multiple 1s statistical measurements of the trap lifetime. Multiple 1s measurements in a single run cycle will allow UCN$\tau$ to study systematic effects including cleaning and phase space evolution. In the 2015-2016 run cycle at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center, UCN$\tau$ commissioned a new active detection scheme, conducted systematic effect studies, and gathered sufficient statistics for a 1s trap lifetime measurement. An overview of updates to the apparatus will be presented in addition to a description of data collected.