KM3NeT - ARCA sea campaigns

Liveblogs during sea campaigns for ARCA

Exciting deployment on the ARCA site!

15 April 2021 – During the last few weeks – despite the pandemic – the KM3NeT Collaboration worked hard to make five new detection units for ARCA ready for deployment. Spooled on their launching vehicles they arrived at the harbour of Malta where a team of KM3NeT technicians, engineers, and scientists inspected thoroughly the units for the last time before they were loaded onto the Miss Marilene Tide of the FUGRO company. In the early morning of 8th April the ship sailed out toward the IDMAR site of ARCA near Sicily for an amazing sea operation. After installing several new components for the seafloor network, on Monday 12 April the deployment of the five new detection units began.

Press_release_ARCA_042021 (pdf)

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Upgrade of ARCA infrastructure

21 December 2020 – Just in time for the winter break, a nice Christmas present was delivered to KM3NeT:  the second main cable between the ARCA detector site and the shore station in the lovely village of Porto Palo di Capo Passero at the isle of Sicily, Italy has been installed. It is an important step in the program of upgrading the ARCA seafloor network for the ARCA detector near Sicily, Italy.

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ARCA is alive again

29 January 2019 – KM3NeT had a good start of 2019. Data taking of the first detection unit of ARCA could be resumed, after the operation of the unit had to be stopped in 2017, because of a fault in the seafloor cable network. Read more




Construction of KM3NeT has begun

Detection unit at the seabed, wound on a spherical deployment frame

3 Dec 2015: Today, the first full size detection unit for KM3NeT-It has been successfully installed. The 700 m long unit – compactly wound on a spherical launching frame – arrived by ship at the installation site 100 km off-shore Sicily, Italy. There it took a big splash into the Mediterranean Sea and landed safely at the seabed at a depth of 3500 m. Read more




Qualification of KM3NeT String Deployment method

KM3NeT-LOM test

15 Apr 2013: During the first two weeks of April, an extensive qualification programme has been executed to qualify the novel string deployment method of KM3NeT.

Short videos demonstrating the concept of deployment can be found in our YouTube channel and playlists.