During a two days sea operation, 27-28 April 2023, three detection units were successfully connected to the ORCA detector of KM3NeT in a record time of just over 24 hours. In addition, an acoustic beacon was recovered for battery replacement. The total number of deployed ORCA units is now 18, as visible in the sonar scan above.

As usual, the operation was performed with two ships: the Castor of Foselev, for deployment of the detection units, and the Janus II of SAAS (formerly Comex), equipped with a deep-sea remotely operated vehicle, 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!

More informations: https://www.km3net.org/category/news/

Following a successful sea operation, the 16-19 April 2023, a collection of new marine science instrumentation is now connected to the Laboratoire Sous-marin Provence Mediterranee (LSPM, https://www.cppm.in2p3.fr/web/en/LSPM/) sea floor infrastructure at the KM3NeT/ORCA site, near Toulon, France.

During the three days sea operation the so-called 'pre-SJB', developed by CPPM Marseille, was connected into the seafloor network. The pre-SJB is a passive junction box housing an AC power transformer and a sea return electrode. During the same operation a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) connected an interlink cable between the pre-SJB and the previously deployed SJB. Two ships were involved in the sea operation; the Raymond Croze of Orange Marine and the Janus II of SAAS.

The SJB (Scientific Junction Box), developed by Ifremer, is a junction box with six output dedicated to marine science instrumentation. The Pre-SJB/SJB are located about 3.7 km west of the KM3NeT/ORCA detector. The SJB and its associated instrumentation had already been deployed about a year ago (https://images.cnrs.fr/en/photo/20220020_0011) and was waiting on the pre-SJB installation to come online.

The instrumentation currently connected to the SJB are the BathyBot seafloor crawler, its docking station BathyDock (MIO/DT-INSU-Marseille, https://emso.eu/2022/02/10/bathybot-the-benthic-robot-for-a-better-understanding-of-the-deep-sea/) and BathyReef (an artificial reef), a broad-band seismograph (GeoAzur-Nice), a germanium gamma spectrometer (CPPM-Marseille,) and a stereo biocamera (IP2I-Lyon, https://images.cnrs.fr/en/photo/20220020_0071).

More information:

• web site: https://www.lspm.in2p3.fr/

• Contact: Paschal Coyle, LSPM director

The LSPM, co-piloted with Aix-Marseille University and Ifremer, is a new and unique research platform. At a depth of more than 2,000 metres, it brings together numerous instruments to study the sea bed, climate change and also the physics of neutrinos, elementary particles from space. This cabled submarine base was inaugurated on Friday 24 February 2023 by, among others, Antoine Petit, President and CEO of the CNRS, Eric Berton, President of Aix-Marseille University, and Bruno Andral, Deputy Director of the Ifremer Méditerranée Centre, in the premises of the Particle Physics Centre in Marseille.

The CPPM is the host laboratory for this national platform.

More informations: https://www.in2p3.cnrs.fr/en/cnrsinfo/antoine-petit-launches-laboratoire-sous-marin-provence-mediterranee-lspm