New Kongsberg EM 710S Passes Initial Royal Navy Sea Trials
Kongsberg Maritime’s latest generation of multi-beam echosounders has passed initial trials onboard the Royal Navy Ice Patrol Ship, HMS Endurance. With the initial trials considered a successful and the impressive capabilities of the EM 710S already noted, the survey suite on HMS Endurance now features one of the most versatile multi-beam systems available today. HMS Endurance’s mission is to patrol and survey the Antarctic and South Atlantic, maintaining very close links with the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office and the British Antarctic Survey.
Kongsberg Maritime engineers will be on hand during the trials. The EM 710 multi-beam echo sounder is a high to very high resolution seabed mapping system capable of meeting all relevant survey standards. The system configuration can be tailored to the user requirements, allowing for choice of beamwidths as well as transmission modes. The minimum acquisition depth is from less than 3 m below its transducers, and the maximum acquisition depth is up to 2,000m. Acrosstrack coverage (swath width) is up to 5.5 times water depth or 140 degrees to a maximum of more than 2,000m. The system is available for different resolutions/array sizes, from 2x2 degrees to 0.5x1 degree. The smaller versions can be delivered also for a portable over-the side mounting bracket. EM 710 features many significant technical advances, such as focussing of both transmit and receive beams, full electronical stabilisation of all beams for ship motions including pitch, roll and yaw, and sectorised transmission. EM 710 will in addition to the bathymetric and imagery seafloor data also process and display water column data. The highest resolution version produces 2 parallel depth profiles per ping sequence, with a total of 800 depth soundings.
