On March 25 2012, the DeepSea Challenger, piloted by James Cameron, arrived at the deepest point in the Mariana Trench. How deep you ask? How about 35,756 feet (10,898 meters)!


He was down there for about 6 hours and of course filmed the whole thing. And since James Cameron was involved...I imagine we’ll be seeing an IMAX movie of the whole experience soon.



What I wouldn’t give for an experience like that! Can you imagine that much water on top of you? I get excited when I’m at 100 feet.


Visit the DeepSea Challenger website for more information. It’s a great website with lots of cool images and detailed info about how they did it.

Comments

scubadmike - 4/21/2012 5:57 AM Looking forward to see it on IMAX .

SeacoastNH - 4/09/2012 9:54 PM I wonder what his ascent rate peaked at... Eric_R - 10/22/2012 3:04 PM I’ll assume it didn’t change as this thing was built to be unaffected by pressure. I figured the descent rate was about 300 ft per min and the ascent rate was about 600 ft per min.

Rich-D-Fish - 4/09/2012 3:26 PM I can’t wait to see the IMAX movie of the experience....but pardon my French "No f_cking way would I do this myself!"

Greg - 3/28/2012 7:17 PM The sub uses a weight belt to descend, and they ditch the weights to ascend. "The sub will descend because of more than 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of steel weights held on to either side by electromagnets. To rise to the surface, the pilot will flip a switch, the plates of steel will fall to the ocean floor, and the lighter-than-water foam will hurtle the sub skyward. This step is critical—if the weights don’t drop, the pilot will be stuck at the bottom of the ocean."

Greg - 3/28/2012 3:46 PM I really like the page about the sub they used: http://deepseachallenge.com/the-sub/