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Friday June 5, 2009
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We can send spacecraft to other planets in the solar system, but exploring the deep ocean here on Earth has always been a tough challenge--even just a few miles down. So it's big news that a robotic sub called Nereus reached the deepest-known part of the ocean to date, according to BBC News. The 6.8-mile dive occurred in the western part of the Pacific Ocean, at the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench.
The feat makes Nereus the deepest-diving vehicle in service, and the first one to explore the trench since 1998, according to the report. Nereus is controlled by pilots aboard a surface ship via a thin, fiber-optic tether, which lets the vehicle make deep dives and also switch to act autonomously.
"The trenches are virtually unexplored, and I am absolutely certain Nereus will enable new discoveries," said Andy Bowen, project manager and principal developer of the sub at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in the report. "I believe it marks the start of a new era in ocean exploration." There are still unexplored parts of the trench--which is over one mile deeper than Mount Everest is high.
Posted By:
Jamie Lendino
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June 5, 2009 11:49 AM
That's incredibly cool - and I really love the first sentence; it's absolutely true that it's easier (not to imply that it's easy) to get probes safely to other planets across hundreds of thousands of miles, but to get a manmade device under the sea only a few miles has been a technical and engineering challenge for years!
It's amazing because while we have most of the ocean floor generally mapped, very few eyes have ever seen images of what's really down there. Here's hoping we'll get some valuable information from Nereus!