China's new submersible mother ship completes maiden voyage

SANYA - China's deep-sea submersible mother ship, Tansuo-1, returned to Sanya in south China's Hainan province on Friday after completing its successful maiden voyage to the Mariana Trench.

The mother ship carried 60 researchers and crew as well as a 10,000-meter autonomous remote-controlled submersible, a 9,000-meter ocean-bottom seismometer and other domestically made devices. It left Sanya on June 22 for the Mariana Trench expedition.

During the expedition, researchers with the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted 84 research tasks and collected a large amount of samples and data at different depths. The results will be announced later.

The 94.45-meter-long Tansuo-1 has a range of 10,000 nautical miles. It is equipped with 10 permanent research labs and two removable labs.

The ship serves as the mother ship for a new manned submersible that can reach a depth of 4,500 meters.

China's current manned submersible, Jiaolong, reached a depth of 7,062 meters in the Mariana Trench in June 2012.