China's submersible completes key stage, nears 2020 test

China has completed a key stage in its manned submersible which can carry humans to the deepest oceans by descending as low as 10,000 meters and hopes to begin trials by 2020, a media report said today.

Chinese scientists finished the trepanning in the entrance and the cabin's observation window, a local television channel reported yesterday, adding that the cabin is the key part of the submersible as it is where aquanauts stay.

The submersible can carry humans to the deepest oceans, which is about 10,000 metres below sea level, and it is set for deep-sea explorations in 2020, state-run Global Times reported.
 

"Descending more than 10,000 metres enables the submersible to dive anywhere undersea and it's significant for our marine research and data collection," said Gao Shu, Dean of the School of Geographic and Oceanographic Sciences at Nanjing University.

Gao said that once the trials were completed, the submersible will be one of the world's most developed and can dive the deepest.

It will help Chinese people see the "true bottom of the sea" with the naked eye, Gao said.

"The submersible will be used for 30 years, so it has to be rust-resistant," said Wang Dingchun, General Manager of the Baoji Titanium Industry Corporation, the company building a titanium sphere.

"The submersible will be used for 30 years, so it has to be rust-resistant. Our company can make a titanium alloy that's almost corrosion-free," Dingchun told CCTV.

Noting that the elasticity of the metal was also important, the manager said it offered much better protection against the massive pressure under the sea than steel.

China became the third country after Japan and the US to build submersibles capable of reaching depths in excess of 10,000 meters, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

China made several breakthroughs in deep sea exploration as a team sailed 7,929 nautical miles to explore the trenches in the west Pacific Ocean, it said, quoting the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) as saying.

The 68-day expedition made China the first to obtain 10,000-meter-deep artificial seismic profile data with a domestic ocean bottom seismograph, at the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the CAS said.