Fast-forward 54 years, and the abyssal Mariana Trench gets her
second batch of human visitors. No one had returned since
Piccard and Walsh’s adventure, until James Cameron completed
his Deep Sea Challenger expedition on 26 March 2012.
Deep Sea Challenger is a submersible like no other. Nicknamed
a ‘giant runner bean’, the sub’s architecture veers away from the
bulky cuboids of standard sub design and is long, thin and
descends vertically into the depths. The sub gradually spins on
its ascent and descent to keep it on track. The pilot sits inside atight, spherical cockpit with custom circuit boards powered by
large versions of model aeroplane batteries. The exterior has a
huge bank of lights to illuminate the voyage.
Cameron descended to 10,908m (35,787ft) armed with
high-defi nition cameras and video equipment alongside state of
the art sampling apparatus. Piccard and Walsh were unable to
document their dive, but Cameron has more than made up for
that, with his feature-length documentary about Deep Sea
Challenger set to hit cinemas in the near future.The Challenger Deep revisited
© Rex feat ures; Peters & Zabransk y(^5) Deepsearch
5,000m (16,404ft)
(expected)
(^10) Deep Flight
Super Falcon Mark II
120m (394ft)
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RIGHT James Cameron
prepares to descend to the
Mariana Trench
FAR RIGHT It took
engineers seven years to
develop the sub
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5
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DID YOU KNOW? The first-ever tethered ROV was named POODLE, developed in 1953 by French inventor Dimitri Rebikoff