China’s manned submersible dives 10,909 meters to deepest known point in Earth’s seabed
China’s manned submersible Fendouzhe, or Striver, made a 10,909-meter dive at Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point in Earth’s seabed on Tuesday.
Striver is the world’s deepest-diving manned submersible, capable of carrying up to three passengers to conduct scientific research in the deep sea. It began taking on the 10,058-meter dive at Mariana Trench on October 27.
Striver is a manned submersible that incorporates the fine lineage of the previous two generations of deep-diving equipment, Jiaolong and Shenhai Yongshi. It not only uses a safe, stable, and powerful energy system, but also has more advanced control and positioning systems, as well as a more pressure-resistant manned capsule and buoyancy materials.
At 10,000 meters down in the Mariana Trench, Striver faces water pressure of more than 110 megapascals, the equivalent of 2,000 African elephants walking on a person’s back.
China’s first independently designed and integrated manned submersible Jiaolong reached a depth of 3,759 meters, making China the fifth country in the world, after the US, France, Russia and Japan, to master the technology of manned deep-sea submersion at a depth of 3,500 meters in July 2010.