Byte me!
Posted: May 28, 2013 Filed under: Home 2 CommentsYou’re about to have computer envy, when I tell you what’s been ordered and delivered for RV Investigator’s onboard computer system processing and storage!
In Hobart at the CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Laboratories we’ve taken delivery of components that will eventually make up the amazing ICT system onboard Investigator, which will allow data from scientific sensors to be captured, stored and transferred to shore. The network also underlies the ship’s telephone and CCTV camera system and every day computing needs.
The ship’s scientific computer network will consist of 8 high-powered fully-redundant servers and around 50 workstations. There are about 1000 network outlets distributed around the vessel, which feed back to a network core via a 10Gbe optical fibre backbone (seriously cool!).
The network will have approximately 70 Terabytes of centralised data storage to store everything from video images of the seafloor collected by a camera system towed several kilometres behind the ship, to sonar images of the seafloor up to seven kilometres below the ocean’s surface, to images from the ship’s powerful weather radar system.
It will also be used for more personal things, like scientists sending emails to family and friends when they’re away for up to 60 days on a voyage.
The ICT system has been designed, and will be installed by, some pretty amazing people from CSIRO’s Information Management and Technology and Science Engineering and Technology groups, including Ian Hawkes from the Future Research Vessel Technical Team and one of his staff, Hugh Barker (Ian on the left and Hugh on the right).
They were like kids in a candy store today, opening boxes in the storeroom, and they also showed me through the ICT Laboratory being set up to allow ship to shore data transfer.
Investigator’s Management Contract signed!
Posted: May 24, 2013 Filed under: Home Leave a commentFor the past few months a small group within the Future Research Vessel Project has been working day and night behind closed doors, undertaking a thorough process to first short list, and then decide on the successful tender for Investigator’s Management Contract.
Operating ships is a complex business that requires a wide cross section of professional maritime skills and expertise in the areas of technical services, crew management and commercial and operational management. Specialist ship management companies provide these skills and expertise to the ship owner, which negates the need for the owners to have an in-house organisation to do this.
Ship Management companies generally provide management services to a number of clients and as such provide a pool of experienced people with a large support infrastructure, which can be shared by all client owners and therefore it is much more cost effective than maintaining a large organisation for the management of a single ship, as would be the case for the Marine National Facility.
We are pleased to announce the contract has been awarded to Melbourne-based ASP Ship Management.
Representatives of CSIRO, the Marine National Facility and ASP Ship Management meet at the CSIRO Laboratories in Hobart to sign the ship management contract (l to r) Bob Bird – ASP Group Chief Operating Officer, David Borcoski – ASP Group Managing Director and CEO, Toni Moate – Executive Director Future Research Vessel Project, Stephen McCullum – Ship Manager, Marine National Facility, Mike Jackson – Project Officer, Future Research Vessel Project.
The contract is signed by Toni Moate and David Borcoski and witnessed by Bob Bird and Stephen McCullum (l to r) Bob Bird – ASP Group Chief Operating Officer, David Borcoski – ASP Group Managing Director and CEO, Toni Moate – Executive Director Future Research Vessel Project, Stephen McCullum – Ship Manager, Marine National Facility.
World Oceans Day LEGO® Investigator Giveaway!
Posted: May 21, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, LEGO, RV Investigator 52 CommentsTo celebrate World Oceans Day we’re giving away a LEGO® Investigator. To enter subscribe to this blog by midnight Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) on 8 June 2013.
Subscribers who’ve already signed up and anyone who subscribes by midnight on World Oceans Day 2013 will be in the running to win.
The winner will be announced on this blog on Tuesday 11 June 2013.
So get to it!
RV Investigator’s Group 2 equipment starts arriving!
Posted: May 20, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, CTD, Future Research Vessel Project, Niskin bottles, ship construction Leave a commentThe scientific equipment onboard RV Investigator has been put into two groups. Group 1 are those items that will be fitted to the ship in Singapore and are part of the construction of the ship; such as, the gondola, drop keels and winches.
Group 2 is made up of items being purchased by the procurement team at CSIRO and this list includes things like the CTD frames, the long sediment corer and greenhouse gas spectrometers.
We’ve just taken delivery of 36 Niskin bottles that will be part of the 36 bottle CTD rosette.
It’s so exciting to see the new equipment starting to arrive in Hobart!
Each piece of scientific equipment has been championed by someone in Australia’s scientific community, in the case of the 36 bottle CTD rosette, it’s been Dave Terhell from CSIRO. Dave was there to receive and inspect the Niskin bottles with Ben Rae from the Future Research Vessel Project.
Fisheries research capabilities on RV Investigator
Posted: May 16, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, Fisheries research, Future Research Vessel Project, RV Investigator Leave a commentHere are some photos to show you some of the equipment and capabilities that will be used by fisheries researchers onboard RV Investigator.
There’s the net drum being manufactured in Norway, then you can see that it’s been installed on the ship and there’s a hatch where the net will be stowed.
RV Investigator’s windlass deck
Posted: May 13, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Anchor, Anchor chain, Anchor locker, Australia's Marine National Facility, Future Research Vessel Project, ship construction, Windlass Leave a commentA windlass is a device that is used to deploy and retrieve the anchor chain, with the anchor attached. On RV Investigator, the windlass deck, or mooring deck, is at the bow of the ship.
The ship has been designed to house the anchor within the external anchor pockets and the hawse pipes the anchor chain will travel through, extends from the external anchor pocket into the windlass or mooring deck.
All the machinery for the anchor is enclosed in the windlass deck. The anchor chains are stored in the chain locker just below the windlass. Spurling pipes carry the anchor chain from the windlass deck down into the chain locker.
CTD room and boom looking great!
Posted: May 8, 2013 Filed under: Home | Tags: Australia's Marine National Facility, CTD Room, Future Research Vessel Project, RV Investigator, ship construction Leave a commentThe CTD instrument has long been a fundamental research tool for marine scientists. Besides its basic function to measure temperature and salinity in the ocean, it allows scientists to fit a wide variety of other instruments to measure other properties, including oxygen and other dissolved gases, phytoplankton and the quantity of biological matter, suspended particles and the depth that sunlight penetrates the ocean.
Students Isabella Rosso (left) and Kate Snow set up a scientific instrument, the CTD, for deployment on RV Southern Surveyor voyage ss2012_v05.
Do you remember block 206, the one with the big brown square that was lifted into place last year in November?
Well that’s the block that will house the CTD room onboard RV Investigator.
Some of the equipment that will deploy the CTDs onboard RV Investigator has now been installed.
