Beijing: China has reportedly sent a vessel into Earth’s deepest ocean trench and livestreamed the footages this Friday.
According to state broadcaster CCTV, a green-and-white vessel named “Fendouzhe”, or “Striver”, descended more than 10,000 metres into the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. Three researchers have gone with the vessel.
Video footage shot and relayed by a deep-sea camera showed that the vessel went towards dark water surrounded by clouds of debris as it slowly touched down on the seabed.
Earlier this month, Fendouzhe had created a national record of 10,909 metres for manned deep-sea diving. However, an American explorer holds the world record which he created in 2019 with the 10,927-metre for manned deep-sea diving.
The submersible is making repeated dives to test its capabilities. It is equipped with robotic arms to collect biological samples and sonar “eyes” that use sound waves to identify surrounding objects.
State broadcaster informed that the three researchers who are on board will collect specimens for their work. “It takes more than two trials before we can call it a real success,” Zhu Min, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences involved in the mission, told CCTV on Tuesday.
(With inputs from ndtv.com)
Ms Kalinga