Activities at sea being resumed at the ARCA site
11 June 2022 – Due to the adverse weather conditions of the last days, the schedule of the sea campaign had to be redefined.
Here is the updated plan:
KM3NeT - neutrino
Intermediate outcome of the ARCA campaign: 2 junction boxes and 12 detection units operational
6 June 2022 – The first round of activities of the ongoing sea campaign at ARCA has been completed.
In a summary, in the past week-end:
KM3NeT@neutrino2022
Fifty years ago, in 1972, the first neutrino conference was held in Hungary, because the organisers were not satisfied with the subdued position of neutrino interactions at the international conferences at that time. Nowadays, the neutrino conference is one of the major conferences in neutrino (astro)particle physics. Neutrino2022 took place in virtual Seoul, 30 May-4 June, 2022 and of course KM3NeT was there to show the results of data taking with the first detection units of ARCA and ORCA.
New sea operation started at ARCA
3 June 2022 – A new sea operation was started yesterday aiming at a significant enlargement of the ARCA neutrino telescope.
Welcome, ORCA-10!
22 November 2021 – Four new detection units have been added to ORCA with a 5-day intense and successful sea operation.
Sea campaign completed: 10 detection units in operation at ORCA
22 November 2021 – Excellent progress today, with the work finalized on the two detection units lately deployed: after a confirmation from the tests that both were ok, the unfurling was started of the two units. The launcher vehicles were safely recovered from the Castor; the ROV inspected both units after unfurling, confirming that both are in nominal configuration. A new functionality test was then performed from the shore station to ensure that both detection units work nominally.
News from the ORCA campaign – hard work ongoing, bad weather approaching
21 November 2021 – The weather forecast does not look promising for next days. The main effort today was spent on some tuning of the equipment and preparation to next steps.
Two new detection units added to ORCA… and counting
20 November 2021 – It was night and day again. The work continues around the clock when you are at sea. The second detection unit was also deployed, connected and tested last night. After that, unfurling was performed for the two detection units. A final test was then made from the shore to check that the two units are ok even after unfurling, et… voilà: ORCA is enlarged to 8 detection units.
First day of activity at the ORCA site
19 November 2021 – The first day of activity has gone at the ORCA site. Most efforts today were aimed at getting everything well prepared for the action. The first detection unit was then deployed to the sea bottom, precisely placed on the sea floor and connected to the submarine infrastructure. The tests performed from shore confirm that the dection unit is nicely working, and it now awaits to be “unfurled” to its work configuration. Deployment of the second detection unit has been started in the evening.
Time to resume data taking in ARCA
15 September 2021 – after the recovery of two old detection units, already left disconnected after previous sea campaigns – the so-called PPM-DU (Pre-Production Model of Detection Unit), a 3-digital optical module unit used for qualification of the project in the sea as early as in 2014, and one of the first prototype full-size detection units deployed in spring 2016, the sea campaign of ARCA has been completed today.
