At noon, local time, James Cameron's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, carrying the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker back from the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep -- Earth's deepest, and perhaps most alien, realm.The first human to reach the 6.8-mile-deep (11-kilometer-deep) undersea valley solo, Cameron arrived at the bottom with the tech to collect scientific data, specimens, and visions unthinkable in 1960, when the only other manned Challenger Deep dive took place, according to members of the National Geographic expedition.
Before surfacing about 300 miles (500 kilometers) southwest of Guam, Cameron spent hours hovering over Challenger Deep's desert -- like seafloor and gliding along its cliff walls, the whole time collecting samples and video.
Among the 2.5-story-tall sub's tools are a sediment sampler, a robotic claw, a "slurp gun" for sucking up small seacreatures for study at the surface, and temperature, salinity, and pressure gauges. (See pictures of Cameron's sub.)
It's been FIFTY years since a man was that deep in the ocean:
Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Don Walsh, who descended to Challenger Deep in 1960, said he was pleased to hear that Cameron had reached the underwater valley safely."That was a grand moment, to welcome him to the club," Walsh, said in a telephone interview from the sub-support ship.
"There're only three of us in it, and one of them -- late Swiss engineer Jacques Piccard -- "is dead. Now it's just Jim and myself. "
Incredible!
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Tags: deep sea dive, James Cameron, Mariana trench, National Geographic
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