![]() Pre-expedition estimates put the Challenger Deep descent at about 90 minutes. The result is the 24-foot-tall (7-meter-tall) DEEPSEA CHALLENGER.Įngineered to sink upright and spinning, like a bullet fired straight into the Mariana Trench, the sub can descend about 500 feet (150 meters) a minute-"amazingly fast," in the words of Robert Stern, a marine geologist at the University of Texas at Dallas. To get to this point, Cameron and his crew have spent seven years reimagining what a submersible can be. ( Video: Cameron Dive First Attempt in Over 50 Years.) "I'm pretty well briefed on what I'll see," he said. Though battery power and vast distances limit his contact with his science team to text messaging and sporadic voice communication, Cameron seemed confident in his mission Friday. (Listen: James Cameron on becoming a National Geographic explorer.) "I'll be doing a bit of a longitudinal transect along the trench axis for a while, and then I'll turn 90 degrees and I'll go north and work myself up the wall," said Cameron, also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence. He'll later follow a route designed to take him through as many environments as possible, surveying not only the sediment-covered seafloor but also cliffs of interest to expedition geologists. Using sonar, "I'm going to attempt to rendezvous with that vehicle so I can observe animals that are attracted to the chemical signature of its bait," Cameron told National Geographic News before the dive. Upon touchdown at Challenger Deep, Cameron's first target is a phone booth-like unmanned "lander" dropped into the trench hours before his dive. ( Video: Cameron Dive Is an Exploration First.)m "They want to get there, and they want to see this happen." "I think people are ready," added Bartlett, of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. (The Society owns National Geographic News.) "People have worked for months or years in a very intensive way to get to this point," said Bartlett, chief scientist for the DEEPSEA CHALLENGE program, a partnership with the National Geographic Society and Rolex. "We're now a band of brothers and sisters that have been through this for a while," marine biologist Doug Bartlett told National Geographic News from the ship before the dive. ( Video: how sound revealed that Challenger Deep is the deepest spot in the ocean.) Meanwhile, the expedition's scientific support team awaits his return aboard the research ships Mermaid Sapphire and Barakuda, 7 miles (11 kilometers) up. Hovering in what he's called a vertical torpedo, Cameron is likely collecting data, specimens, and imagery unthinkable in 1960, when the only other explorers to reach Challenger Deep returned after seeing little more than the silt stirred up by their bathyscaphe.Īfter as long as six hours in the trench, Cameron-best known for creating fictional worlds on film ( Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)-is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface. Cameron is only the third person to reach this Pacific Ocean valley southwest of Guam (map)-and the only one to do so solo. Reaching bottom after a 2-hour-and-36-minute descent, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker typed out welcome words for the cheering support crew waiting at the surface: "All systems OK."įolded into a sub cockpit as cramped as any Apollo capsule, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker is now investigating a seascape more alien to humans than the moon. ![]() His depth on arrival: 35,756 feet (10,898 meters)-a figure unattainable anywhere else in the ocean. Monday, local time), James Cameron arrived at the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep, members of the National Geographic expedition have confirmed. See updated story: "James Cameron Completes Record-Breaking Mariana Trench Dive."Īt 5:52 p.m.
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