Technology:
ROV (Towsled) Atalanta
Credit
Ocean Exploration Trust
Atalanta was first launched in 2019 and is a smaller version of Argus used in tandem with ROVs Little Hercules or Hercules, where it hovers several meters above in order to provide a bird’s-eye view of the ROV working on the seafloor. Atalanta is also capable of operating as a stand-alone system for wider-scale deepwater survey missions or as a sled for towed sensors like sidescan sonars.
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ROV Atalanta At-a-Glance
General
- 6,000 meters (19,685 feet)
- 2.16 meters long × 1.0 meters wide × 1.2 meters tall
- 1000 kg (2200 pounds) in air. 1700 pounds in water
- 2 knots
- 20–30 meters/minute, (65–98 feet/minute) max
- Two Tecnadyne Model 1020 1 HP thrusters for heading control
Imaging & Lighting
- One Insite Pacific Mini Zeus high-definition camera
- Two mini utility cameras (fixed mounted) 480 line NTSC format
- Eight Deep Sea Power & Light (LED) LSL-1000 SphereLights
Vehicle Sensors & Navigation
- Lord Microstrain 3DM-GX5-25 Attitude and Heading Reference System (AHRS)
- Paroscientific Digiquartz 8CB series
- Valeport VA500 500Khz Altimeter
- Mesotech 1071, 675 kHz, 0.5–100 meter range typical
Scientific Instrument Support
- 110 V 60 Hz AC, 24 VDC and 12 VDC power options
- Ethernet, RS-232
