The NEutrino Mediterranean Observatory (NEMO) Project

Since 1998 the NEMO Collaboration started a long term activity dedicated to improve deep-sea technologies and to characterize an optimal site for the installation of a km3 neutrino Telescope in the Mediterranean sea. More than 25 sea campaigns were performed to deploy and recover instrumented lines of multi-functional detectors, dedicated to survey the environmental characteristics and water optical properties at different sites. A site close to Capo Passero, 80 km from the southern coast of Sicily, Italy, at 3500 m below the Sea level shows excellent peculiarity to host a km 3 underwater detector. A complete feasibility study, which considered all the detector critical components and the deployment procedures, has been carried out demonstrating that technological solutions exist for the realization of an underwater km 3 detector. In parallel, an intense R&D activity finalized at the development of new solutions for the sensors and the DAQ electronics is in progress. The realization of a technological demonstrator of the apparatus (the NEMO Phase 1 project) near the Catania harbour, at a depth of 2000 m, is scheduled in 2006. The realization of a second demonstrator (a full tower with 16 storeys, 64 optical modules) at the Capo Passero site is foreseen for 2007. c Copyright owned by the author(s) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Licence.