KOCHI: The Southern Naval Command (SNC) and the Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory (NPOL) on Monday will jointly organise an event here to mark the successful completion of 200 scientific missions of INS Sagardhwani, a marine acoustic research ship owned by NPOL.
Rear Admiral R J Nadkarni, Chief of Staff, SNC, will be the chief guest at the function which will be presided by NPOL director S Kedarnath Shenoy.
A monograph highlighting the scientific contributions of INS Sagardhwani over the past two decades and 200 scientific missions will be released to mark the occasion.
“The monograph takes a comprehensive look at the contributions of INS Sagardhwani which are important to our understanding of different aspects of anti-submarine warfare (ASW) research activities at NPOL,” a release said here.
It places special emphasis on the various scientific missions and associated experiments aimed to conceptualise, develop, and perfect new measurement technologies, primarily in the area of physical oceanography, geophysics and underwater acoustics.
During its 23 years of service, it has undertaken a large number of missions covering the waters of the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.
INS Sagardhwani has ushered in a host of new findings and has led to technology development efforts that have raised NPOL’s competence and credibility. The vessel has played host to a number of projects successfully executed by ocean scientists at NPOL.
NPOL is one of the premier system laboratories of DRDO primarily engaged in the design and development of underwater surveillance systems to meet the requirements of the Navy.
Its at-sea activities are spearheaded by INS Sagardhwani which conducts ocean research experiments relevant to lab’s charter.
INS Sagardhwani
INS Sagardhwani is one of the first indigenously built oceanographic research ships. It is 85 m in length and 13 m in breadth. It was built by Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers Ltd, Kolkata, and was commissioned on July 30, 1994. Operated and maintained by the Navy for DRDO, the ship is based at the Southern Naval Command, Kochi. A number of state-of-the-art scientific laboratories to support multidisciplinary studies make the ship the main stay in oceanographic research for NPOL.