Digital Divers

By Sarah Conway and Olivia Kindfuller

The USS Monitor, known for its pivotal role as the first Union ironclad warship in the Civil War, sunk in 1862 during a storm off North Carolina. Today, 163 years later, the USS Monitor lies on the ocean floor serving as a sanctuary to a multitude of species. Northrop Grumman and its cutting-edge sonar technology recently captured never-before-seen angles of the historical sunken ship to help a federal organization study the shipwreck-turned-sanctuary.

The wreck was discovered in 1973 and designated as the country’s first National Marine Sanctuary by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1975. The USS Monitor now serves as a thriving artificial reef, home to diverse marine life and a symbol of American maritime heritage. NOAA monitors the health of the sanctuary and was in search of a readily available, specific tool to closer evaluate the status of the site; Northrop Grumman’s Micro-SAS (μSAS) technology provided exactly that unique capability. In September 2025, through the company’s Technology for Conservation (T4C) initiative, NOAA and Northrop Grumman partnered to scan the historic ocean-floor site, gathering environmental data, shipwreck imagery and evolution details about the current health of the sanctuary.

“The project sounded like a great adventure — and it was,” said Brad Linter, who was the technology operator on the USS Monitor mission in the Atlantic Ocean. “It was a new experience to operate our vehicle in the open ocean, but we were able to capture images of the surrounding debris field and assist NOAA in collecting biological data to further identify what species inhabit the area.”