20 April 2026 – A very successful sea operation took place last week, leading to a new extension of the ORCA submarine telescope.
In about four days of operation in good sea conditions, five new detection units were installed in the deep sea and connected to the detector. In addition a new tripod bearing an acoustic emitter to be used for positioning purposes was installed and the subsidiary battery of the submarine node was recharged (a maintenance operation which has to be performed every few years).
At the end of the operation, the apparatus comprises 38 detection units.
As usual, the operation was performed with two ships: the Castor 02 of Foselev, for deployment of the detection units, and the Janus II of SAAS (formerly Comex), equipped with the Apache deep-sea remotely operated vehicle (ROV), for submarine operations.
Everything worked very smoothly – many thanks to the crews offshore as well as to the team who performed the functional tests of the new detection units from the shore station and anyone else involved in making this great step forward possible!
Welcome, ORCA38!
