Kinemetrics MEMS Technology for NASA's InSight Mission to Mars

Kinemetrics is pleased to announce our technology contribution to the delivery of a micro-machined silicon seismometer for NASA's InSight mission to Mars. Although the mission itself has been delayed by an unrelated problem in a separate instrument, the microseismometer known as SP was successfully built, tested and delivered last year with a performance exceeding mission requirements. 

The new launch date for the mission is for a window beginning on May 5th 2018. The micro-machined sensors built at Imperial College London are based on a joint Kinemetrics/Imperial development program and have set a record for the lowest noise floor of any MEMS sensor at 0.3 ng/√Hz. To achieve such performance the sensors are coupled with electronics designed by Kinemetrics and built at Oxford University. 

The sensors can operate over a tilt range of 15 degrees on Mars, equivalent to 6 degrees on Earth with no compromise in performance. Their robustness to the harsh environment expected on the InSight mission was demonstrated during vibration testing to 28 grms, and shock testing exceeding 200g. Beyond InSight and Mars these microseismometers are now prime candidates for proposed missions to Europa, Jupiter's icy moon as well as our own Moon. 

Learn more about NASA's InSight mission to Mars here. 

Q330 Digitizer Ready for Earthquake Early Warning Systems

Timeliness of Data Delivery from Q330 Systems, a newly published paper by Joseph M. Steim and Robert D. Reimiller in the Seismological Research Letters (Vol 85, No 4, pp 844-851), shows that Quanterra’s Q330 digitizer is capable of delivering data with a mean latency of less than 1 second. The capability to achieve routinely sub-one-second latency of waveform data transmission is important for earthquake early warning applications. Learn more at Seismological Research Letters.  

Quanterra is the New World Standard

Why settle for less, when you can have the World's Best!!

Read more . . . . . .  http://www.kmi.com/uploads/PDFs/STS-5A%20Datasheet.pdf

PBB-200S COMPARES EXTREMELY WELL TO STS-2

 

PBB-200S COMPARES EXTREMELY WELL TO STS-2:

Noise results of the PBB-200S units tested at USGS Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (USGS/ASL) during February 2013. These noise results seem to be fairly similar to the noise results from our test in October of 2011.

Note the horizontal noise levels are fairly impressive for the Class “C” broadband seismometer!

World standard, the STS-2, was used as a reference seismometer. The PBB 200S is considered to be a Class “C” broadband seismometer where the STS-1/M2166-VBB is Class “A” and STS-2 is a Class “B” broadband seismometer.

The report is courtesy of the USGS Albuquerque Seismological Laboratory (USGS/ASL), Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA. This information does not in any way represent USGS endorsement of the aforementioned product(s).

PBB-200S Wins Good Design's Industrial Design Award 2012

Kinemetrics' Etna strong-motion station behind urban artwork

So what is behind this very colorful urban artwork?  A Kinemetrics' Etna strong-motion station. 

Italy has discovered a way to place their station above ground in a very conspicuous location, yet make it look so appealing to the eye.  Not wanting to compromise on the most strategic site for the station, they combined creativity with the business concept of "location, location, location!"

Since installation of this station, Kinemetrics has designed the Basalt, which has replaced the Etna.

Basalt represents the next evolution in Kinemetrics Strong Motion Instrumentation. Offering exceptional high dynamic range, matched to Kinemetrics outstanding EpiSensor accelerometer performance, and with exemplary timing accuracy, and spectral purity the Basalt again advances the standards of strong motion data recording. Complementing this outstanding data fidelity is a new suite of communication capabilities offering multiple real time data streams to multiple clients.

OSS Kinemetrics Assists With Deployment of Chilean Strong Motion Network

OSS group assists Chile's National Office of Emergency (ONEMI) in the deployment of an advanced strong-motion network. ONEMI received the first 50 of 297 Basalt Accelerographs slated to provide key information to the engineering and scientific communitiy to enhance Chile's seismic code. For more details (in espanol), please see El Mercurio Article.