14 DAY TRIAL // Officials with the US National Science Foundation announce that their latest ship, the research vessel R/V Sikuliaq, has successfully completed a series of preliminary acceptance trials on the Great Lakes, in the northern United States. The assessment sessions unfolded at the end of February, even though initial plans called for the ship to be ready in January.
NSF officials plan to have the ship travel to Washington, DC, before this summer, saying that the remaining tests can be easily completed on the East Coast. R/V Sikuliaq is 79.5 meters (261 feet) long and set the Foundation back around $200 million (€145 million). By September, the federal agency plans to have it start conducting funded research.
The vessel is being built by the Marinette Marine Corporation in Marinette, Wisconsin, as a replacement for the research vessel Alpha Helix, which was built in 1966 and retired in 2007. Though the NSF is the beneficiary on the contract, the University of Alaska Fairbanks School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences will operate the ship, which will be based in Seward, Alaska.
Though not a fully-fledged icebreaker, R/V Sikuliaq is capable of sailing through ice-heavy waters, such as those in the Arctic and Southern Oceans. The vessel was designed specifically to conduct research in extreme ecosystems and will be used by both scientists and engineers over the next few decades.