The disconnection of the interlink cables between the junction box and the line anchors, carried out with the manned Nautile submarine on 12/02/2022, defined the end of data taking of the ANTARES detector.
As a natural follow-up step, two dismantling campaigns took place in May and June 2022. The Castor02 ship from Foselev Marine and the Janus-II ship with its ROV Apache from SAAS – the work horses used for the majority of ANTARES and KM3Net/ORCA campaigns – had been in operation. During these two operations all active detector elements have been recovered and brought to shore. Only the junction box will remain in place until a forthcoming KM3NeT campaign to reroute the main electro-optical cable from the ANTARES to the KM3NeT/ORCA site.
One of the last recovered elements was the PPM-DOM (see Figure below), the first prototype of the future KM3NeT DOMs, installed in 2013 and still in good shape. Some of the ANTARES equipment, notably the optical modules with their photomultipliers, might be used in future science projects. Other parts will be recycled or used in exhibitions or other outreach projects to illustrate the success of this first-generation deep-sea neutrino telescope.
The recovery of the PPM-DOM, the first prototype of the future KM3NeT DOMs, still in good shape. This marks the passage to the next generation – KM3NeT.
