Kongsberg Maritime will supply an extensive suite of hydroacoustic research and positioning equipment for a sophisticated new 71.3m research vessel, the MEDUSA Project, which will be built for the Chilean Navy starting mid 2008.

The MNOK 27.3 contract, which was facilitated by the different product groups in Kongsberg Maritime's Subsea Division and Kongsberg Maritime's Chilean representative Robinson Marine Electronics, was signed by ASMAR Shipyard and Kongsberg Maritime in Talcahuano, Chile on February 12th 2008.

The MEDUSA project is a large national effort by Chile, led by the Chilean Navy and the Undersecretary of Fisheries, which is set to benefit researchers in all maritime research disciplines in Chile.

The scope of supply consists of Kongsberg Maritime Fishery/Fishery Research equipment, HiPAP 500 positioning and a complete Hydrographic package in addition to full system integration, spare parts and services. The equipment will provide Chilean Oceanographic and Fishery research scientists with the most advanced hydroacoustic and positioning systems available when the vessel enters service, in late 2010.

Simrad, Kongsberg Maritime's famous professional fishery and fishery research equipment company will supply SX90 and SH80 Sonars in addition to trawl instrumentation in the form of its PI44 and FS70 systems, both of which are sophisticated, market leading systems. The SX90 Sonar, which entered the market in October 2007 uses dual computers for signal processing and is the company's, and fishing industry's most powerful Sonar to date. A Simrad EK60 with five frequencies will also be installed.

The Kongsberg Maritime portion of the contract, which covers 80% of the contract value, contains equipment for seabed, sub seabed and water column mapping as well as hydroacoustic positioning equipment and integration of all the scientific systems and data onboard. Supply includes the most sophisticated high resolution multibeam echo sounders available in the market today, the EM 122 1x1 and the EM 710 1x1, a single beam EA 600 echosounder, the SBP 120 3x3 Sub Bottom Profiler, which is fully integrated with the EM 122, SSU for acoustic synchronisation and the sophisticated Marine Data Management and Integration tool, MDM 400.

"We're delighted to be responsible for supplying such a cutting-edge package of scientific equipment for the Chilean Navy's new research vessel," comments Jan Haug Kristensen, Kongsberg Maritime. "The majority of the world's research vessels feature Kongsberg Maritime and Simrad equipment of some kind, and it's this experience and technical know-how that helped Kongsberg Maritime and Robinson Marine Electronics to secure such an extensive package with ASMAR."

Tags: Kongsberg Maritime