Kongsberg Maritime has announced that its 100th deep-water multibeam echo sounder system has been ordered and will be delivered in November 2009 to the US Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO).
The contract, for delivery of a sophisticated EM 122 (1° x 1°) is part of the Multibeam Sonar System upgrade program for the US Navy T-AGS 60 class survey vessels.
Compared to previous models, the new EM 122 for NAVOCEANO has up to four times the resolution in terms of sounding density and over twice the number of detections per swath. The new technology also doubles the along-track sounding density through implementation of multi-ping with two swaths per ping to ensure a constant spacing of the swath along-track and 100% bottom coverage even with a 0.5° system. The latest generation also implements long FM chirps to ensure coverage of over 30km. From customer acceptance tests it has been proven that the system can achieve swath coverage of more than 40km under favourable conditions.
NAVOCEANO is located at Stennis Space Center near the Mississippi coast and is responsible for acquiring and analysing global ocean and littoral data.
Onboard, surveyors are equipped with the necessary tools that allow them to conduct operations concerning physical, chemical and biological oceanography; multi-discipline environmental investigations; ocean engineering and marine acoustics; marine geology and geophysics; and bathymetric, hydrographic, gravimetric and magnetometric surveying.
