On 13 March, a festive launch of the mega-science facility Baikal deep underwater neutrino telescope will be held. The launch will be made by Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation V. N. Falkov together with JINR Director RAS Academician, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics G. V. Trubnikov, Director of the INR RAS, Doctor of Physics and Mathematics M. V. Libanov and Rector of ISU A. F. Schmidt.

The event is organized in the framework of the Year of Science and Technology in Russia and the celebration of the 65th anniversary of JINR.

Moreover, on 12 March, a Memorandum of understanding will be signed on the ice of the Baikal deep underwater neutrino telescope camp. The document will focus on the further development of the Baikal-GVD project, as well as experimental studies in the fields of neutrino high-energy astrophysics, neutrino astronomy, and neutrino physics.

Since 2015, the Baikal-GVD international collaboration has been building the mega-science facility Baikal deep underwater neutrino telescope on 106 km of the Circum-Baikal Railway on Lake Baikal. The installation of the facility is being conducted under the auspices of researchers from the INR RAS (Moscow) and JINR (Dubna) with a significant contribution of scientists and engineers from Russian scientific centres (ISU, NSTU, and others) and scientists from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.

The main objectives of the neutrino telescope under construction are to find high-energy neutrino sources, to study the evolution of galaxies and the Universe. It will also be the basis for the development of neutrino astronomy and astrophysics. It is planned to create the detector with a volume of one cubic kilometre. The neutrino telescope on lake Baikal has already become the largest neutrino telescope in the Northern hemisphere. This year, after the launch of the eighth cluster of the telescope, the facility will reach the volume of the IceCube telescope at the South Pole.