The R/V Neil Armstrong departed its home port of Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, October 28. It will travel from Cape Cod down the St. Lawrence Seaway, through the locks, and across the Great Lakes. The 238-foot vessel is expected to arrive in Duluth on November 9.
R/V Neil Armstrong is Great Lakes-bound.
As of Thursday morning, the Neil Armstrong was traveling up the Atlantic Coast around Nova Scotia.
The University of Minnesota Duluth is working with the research vessel to detect and observe neutrino interactions in Lake Superior. Neutrinos are the most abundant particles that have mass in the universe, and they pass through everything. They are very difficult to detect, so studying them requires special instruments.
A beam of neutrinos is already positioned by Fermilab that runs through Lake Vermilion and Lake Superior. The Neil Armstrong will deploy sensor frames on the lakebed of Lake Superior several miles offshore near Two Harbors. These frames are 30 feet tall and weigh 8,000 pounds each. When it’s dark at night, they will be able to detect neutrino particle beams underwater. They anticipate detecting several NuMI beam neutrinos per day during the experiments.
The neutrino detectors will be removed as lake conditions allow in the spring or early summer of 2027. You can read more about the project in depth from the University of Minnesota Duluth.
Six years ago, the U.S. Navy announced plans to construct two ships in a new Ocean Class of research vessels and in 2010, awarded WHOI the no-cost lease to operate the first of the ships. Two years later, the Navy announced the first ship would be named Neil Armstrong and its sister ship, to be operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, would be named Sally Ride. The 238-ft. Neil Armstrong is the newest ship in the U.S. academic fleet, and one of just seven in that fleet capable of accessing all but ice-covered areas of the global ocean.
The R/V Neil Armstrong is the most technologically advanced ship in the U.S. academic fleet. The ship contains two multi-beam echo sounders designed to operate at different depths, making Neil Armstrong and, when completed, Sally Ride, the only ships in the UNOLS fleet equipped to conduct high-resolution seafloor surveys almost anywhere the ship can sail.
The ship’s three acoustic Doppler current profilers (ADCPs) can scan the water column at different frequencies to reveal the invisible structure of water at varying depths and resolutions, and a multi-beam, multi-frequency echosounder, the EK-80, can not only detect the presence and abundance of marine life beneath the ship, but also offers the potential to differentiate among species of fish and other marine life hidden beneath the surface.
From an engineering standpoint, as well, the ship is state-of-the-art. In addition to clean-burning diesel-electric generators, variable-frequency DC propulsion means less wear-and-tear on critical components and higher efficiency. The new ship’s integrated controls provide access to virtually every critical system, from propulsion and navigation to electrical load to heating and air conditioning to ballast, on touch screens in the engine room and bridge. The navigation system can be monitored and diagnosed from shore.
KDHL
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