8 July 2026 – A very successful sea operation took place during last week-end, leading to a new extension of the ORCA submarine telescope off the coast of Toulon, France.
During the operation, four new detection units were installed in the deep sea and connected to the detector in a record time of an average 8.5 hours of operation per unit.
Ancillary actions were also performed, including a deep-sea inspection of some detection units, recovery of one acoustic emitter of the positioning system which requires some maintenance and recovery of biofouling traps installed years ago which will provide new insights on how to preserve the transparency of the glass of the optical modules in the deep sea over very extended periods.
At the end of the operation, the apparatus comprises 42 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.
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, ORCA42!
