Bollinger Mississippi Shipbuilding has floated out the future USNS Robert Ballard, the US Navy's newest Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship (T-AGS).
The vessel honours Dr Robert Ballard, a retired US Navy officer and former director of the Center for Ocean Exploration. The navy said the name selection follows the tradition of naming survey ships after explorers, oceanographers, and distinguished marine surveyors.
A tenured professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography, Dr Ballard is known as a discoverer of the final resting place of ill-fated passenger liner Titanic.
Ballard will be operated by the Military Sealift Command. She will be the eighth and final vessel in the Pathfinder-class.
Upon completion, the vessel will have two multi-purpose cranes and five winches plus a variety of oceanographic equipment, including multibeam echosounders, towed sonars and expendable sensors.
The ship will be capable of carrying two self-propelled, sonar-equipped hydrographic survey launches for data collection in coastal regions with depths between 10 and 600 metres, and in deep water to 4,000 metres.