Technology
Explorer sets record-breaking dive 35,000 feet down to LOWEST point on Earth
A BRITISH-AMERICAN explorer has become the first person to travel to Earth’s four furthest extremes after reaching the lowest point in the oceans.
Richard Garriott, 59, has now traversed the north and south poles, reached Earth’s orbit and plunged to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench beneath the Pacific Ocean.
Richard Garriott has now traversed the north and south poles, reached Earth’s orbit and plunged to the deepest point in the oceans[/caption]
Strapped into a deep sea submersible, the video game pioneer and entrepreneur sank seven miles on March 1.
To put that into perspective, Mount Everest is 5.5 miles high.
“I’ve been to the bottom of the Earth – you can’t go deeper than that,” he said from the expedition ship Pressure Drop, as reported by The Times.
“I am the first person to go pole to pole, space and deep and the second person – first male – to go space [to] deep.”
The entrepreneur sank to Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench beneath the Pacific Ocean[/caption]
The son of a Nasa astronaut, Garriott described the alien-like life found 35,000ft (11,000m) beneath sea level.
“There was a whole variety of small and somewhat difficult to see lifeforms, small sea cucumber-related creatures and translucent creatures like flatworms,” he said.
Garriott made the dive on board the “Limiting Factor”, a deep submergence vehicle developed by undersea explorer Victor Vescovo.
In August 2020, former Nasa astronaut Kathy Sullivan used the vessel to become the first space traveller and first women to dive to Challenger Deep.
Like Sullivan, Garriott made the trip as part of dives to research the bottom of the Marianna Trench and collect scientific samples.
Little is known about the conditions and wildlife at Earth’s deepest points because the technology to get there is still in its nascent stages.
Challenger Deep is inhabited by weird and wonderful creatures (stock)[/caption]
Limiting Factor is the only commercially available submarine capable of withstanding the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
It took four hours for the crew to reach Challenger Deep.
On the way up, at a depth of about 1,600ft (500m), Garriott and sub pilot Victor came across a siphonophore, a colony of cells that connect to form what appears to be a single creature.
“It looked a bit like a big mop of tentacles, each a metre in length,” he said.
“We bumped into it and it broke into all these pieces that grow into more siphonophores. We didn’t harm it, it just created more.”
Born in Cambridge, England, Garriott made millions in the video game industry before pivoting to exploration in the 2000s.
What is the ISS?
Here’s what you need to know about the International Space Station…
- The International Space Station, often abbreviated to ISS, is a large space craft that orbits Earth and houses astronauts who go up there to complete scientific missions
- Many countries worked together to build it and they work together to use it
- It is made up of many pieces, which astronauts had to send up individually on rockets and put together from 1998 to 2000
- Ever since the year 2000, people have lived on the ISS
- Nasa uses the station to learn about living and working in space
- It is approximately 250 miles above Earth and orbits around the planet just like a satellite
- Living inside the ISS is said to be like living inside a big house with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, a gym, lots of science labs and a big bay window for viewing Earth
He trekked to the South Pole in 1998, spent ten days in orbit on the International Space Station in 2008 and went to the North Pole in 2018.
Garriott is said to have paid Russian space agency Roscosmos $30million for his space trip, which was turned into an eight-minute documentary.
It was the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition for the multimillionaire, who wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, Nasa astronaut Own Garriott.
Garriott isn’t the first famous explorer to reach the bottom of the Marianna Trench.
Oscar winning movie maker James Cameron became the first person to make a solo journey to Challenger Deep back in 2012.
The Titanic director told how he hurtled down a “yawning chasm” into the “last frontier on planet Earth”.
Cameron said he was stunned by the “completely featureless, alien world”.
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In other news, a Japanese billionaire last week launched a search for eight people to join him as the first private passengers on a trip around the moon.
A giant squid has been captured looming over a deep sea probe in a rare photograph.
And, Nasa has unveiled a new lunar lander that could put astronauts back on the Moon in 2024.
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