Leckie assesses refurbished research ship
Geosciences professor R. Mark Leckie is one of seven scientists currently assessing the readiness of the research and ocean core drilling vessel Joides Resolution (JR) at sea after the 30-year-old ship was totally refurbished in a Singapore dry dock for the past two years.
“We’re currently in the western equatorial Pacific, where we are on station taking cores of deep-sea sediments, testing the laboratory equipment, learning the new integrated data collection and retrieval software, and emulating the process of core description and analysis that will occur during regular scientific drilling expeditions,” Leckie says.
He and colleagues are conducting the science sea trials while in transit to Honolulu, after what officials of the National Science Foundation and Organization for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program call the “complete transformation to modernize and upgrade the ship,” which began service as a scientific vessel in 1985. This is a “long-awaited day for the world of ocean research,” said Robert Gagosian, president and CEO of the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.
Leckie was also a member of the science design team who helped draft plans in 2005-06 for the redesign of the seven-story lab stack aboard the JR. It is designed to explore and monitor the sub-seafloor. Research projects of thousands of scientists around the world will be enhanced by the ship’s return to active duty and its improved capacity for collecting sub-seafloor samples that would otherwise remain out of reach of those studying past ocean conditions.
Images courtesy of Ocean Drilling Program/Texas A&M University
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February 23, 2009.
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