Sverdrup in the Greenland, Norwegian and Barents seas. In one instance Mizar penetrated the ice pack while Hayes remained in the open sea. The closure of the ice and mechanical problems led to Mizar becoming stuck in the ice pack along with her icebreaker escort which also suffered from mechanical problems. Both were freed by after some days. One of the NRL developments deployed on Mizar was the Light Behind Camera (LIBEC) that extended the coverage of deep sea cameras significantly. That system was used to photograph portions of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge during Project FAMOUS. Searches Often more public attention was drawn to the ship's searches for sunken ships than to routine research. Mizar took part in the search operations for Thresher, the Palomares Incident in which nuclear weapons were lost off Palomares, Spain. The ship was engaged in the extended search for – which was found in October, 1968. She also took part in searches for foreign wrecks, including Eurydice. In 1969 Mizar was called on to locate the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute deep submersible Alvin, fellow searcher off Palomares, had sunk in . Mizar lifted the submersible to shallow water. Mizar was not involved, despite speculation, in the search for the Soviet submarines K-129 as the ship was well known to the Soviets and could not operate clandestinely. Addition of water sampling capability to the search vehicle allowed environmental monitoring as well as location and photography. One example is the ship's monitoring of the scuttled, nerve agent laden, five times between 1970 and 1974. The entire hulk could be photographed and water samples taken close to its deck. Assignment to undersea surveillance The Naval Research Laboratory was forced by increasing ship costs to choose between Mizar and the newer Hayes and chose to retain Hayes. In 1975 Mizar came under the technical control of the Naval Electronic Systems Command (NAVELEX) to become part of the "Caesar fleet" supporting the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) installation under the unclassified name Project Caesar. A footnote to a table of ships in The Federal Ocean Program dated April 1974 noted that Mizar was funded and operated by NAVELEX and no longer was funded as an oceanographic ship. The ship was assigned to Military Sealift Command Pacific in 1975 and underwent another major modification in 1980. As of 1979 Mizar was the most recently built ship of the five ships directly assigned to