The 2009 Expedition

There is less than half a year to go before this new expedition will be on its way, to finally pry the secret of the fate of the Latham 47 out of the Arctic Sea. End of August, the team and ships will leave Tromsø for a mission that will keep them at sea for almost two weeks, searching an area of 45 square miles. Two ships will work together: KNM Tyr, a Royal Norwegian Navy Vessel, and its supply vessel, the KV Harstadt, belonging to the fleet of the Norwegian Coast Guard. Most important for the success of the mission are the high tech apparatus that will be onboard.

Hugin 1000, developed by Kongsberg Maritime is a powerful deep water scientific AUV, equipped with side scan or synthetic aperture sonar, multibeam echo sounder, and a state of the art integrated inertial navigation system. With Hugin 1000, the Navy can program missions within the device, deploy it and the AUV then operates independently without any cables. The AUV is capable of high resolution seabed mapping – essential in such an expedition.

Hugin 1000 can function independently for twelve hours. After that, the high tech instrument must be taken back onboard Tyr, where the data inside Hugin 1000 is downloaded. This takes another twelve hours. During this time it is also being recharged.

The ROV Scorpion 21 is highly manoeuvrable and operated by one person aboard the vessel. It is connected to the ship by a tether (sometimes referred to as an umbilical cable), a group of cables that carry electrical power, video and data signals back and forth between the operator and the vehicle. The ROV is equipped with four cameras and will be upgraded with a ultra modern HD-TV camera. Because it receives power from the ship, it can be in the water as long as necessary.

Both Hugin 1000 and Scorpion 21 guarantee a continual work flow; new information will be reviewed constantly, and the Search for Amundsen will continue uninterrupted until the moment when, hopefully, the data reveals the answer to the long sought-after question: What really happened in June 1928?

In order to maximize the chances of finding any objects of interest on the sea floor, plans are currently being made to bring along another side scan sonar onboard KV Harstadt.