Then and Now

Editor’s note: On March 26, 2012, James Cameron made a record-breaking solo dive to the Earth’s deepest point, successfully piloting the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER nearly 7 seven miles (11 kilometers) to the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. DEEPSEA CHALLENGE is now in its second phase—scientific analysis of the expedition’s findings. Click here for news about the historic dive, an exclusive postdive interview with Cameron, and information about the next phase of the expedition.

The first explorers to descend to the deepest part of the oceans were U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Swiss oceanographer and engineer Jacques Piccard.

They made their journey on January 23, 1960, in the Swiss-designed, Italian-built, United States Navy bathyscaphe Trieste. After a descent that took almost five hours, they reached a depth of 35,800 feet (10,912 meters) in the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep. The bathyscaphe carried no scientific equipment, and no experiments were conducted. Walsh and Piccard stayed on the bottom for 20 minutes before dumping tons of iron pellets to begin an ascent that lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes.

James Cameron’s DEEPSEA CHALLENGER submersible deploys technologies unimagined in the 1960s. The craft is much lighter, using a special kind of foam to give it both buoyancy and protection from the extreme environment nearly 7 miles (11 kilometers) beneath the surface. Whereas the Trieste took nearly five hours to descend and more than three hours to ascend, the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER can reach the bottom in about two hours and can return to the surface in about an hour. The 21st-century craft can explore the ocean floor for six hours or more, moving around to make photographic and 3-D video images and to collect samples with a mechanical arm.