China’s manned submersible completes key stage, nears 2020 test

Beijing, Nov 28 (IANS) Chinese engineers have completed a key stage in China's manned submersible that can descend as low as 10,000 metres and hope to begin trials by 2020.

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, the Global Times reported on Tuesday.

Chinese scientists finished the trepanning in the entrance and the cabin's observation window, the China Central Television reported, adding that the cabin was the key part of the submersible as it was where aquanauts stay.

"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.

China became the third country after Japan and the US to build submersibles capable of reaching depths in excess of 10,000 metres, Xinhua news agency reported.

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

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

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