Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), well-known for its achievements in space research, is now trying to send the deep ocean manned mission to 6000 meters down the ocean. It has specially developed a personnel sphere on its way to completing the project.
ISRO is currently working on the Samudrayaan project. It is planning to send the first manned submersible for deep ocean missions. It is also working on the Gagan Yaan project, which is aimed to send the manned mission to space by 2024.
A personal sphere was developed and tested by the national ocean technology institute. The autonomous organization works under the ministry of earth sciences. This personnel sphere was specially designed for the manned submersible system.
Minister of earth sciences, science & technology Mr Jitender Singh informed Rajya Sabha on Thursday in a written reply telling the details of the personnel sphere. The information states that the personal sphere is about the 2.1 diameter and has been developed by using mild steel as a crew module up to the depth of 500 meters.
It has been tested by sending it to the 600 meters depth into the Bay of Bengal by using a research vessel named Sagar Nidhi in October 2021.
The cabinet was approved for the Rs 6000-crores deep ocean manned mission. As a part of this project, ISRO will send a manned submersible to the deep ocean of 6000 meters down, which also carries 3 persons and scientific sensors and tools.
Mr Singh also stated in his statement to Rajya sabha,
the personnel sphere made up of titanium alloy aimed to reach the 6000 meters down in the sea is under development in association with Isro’s Vikram Sarabhai space centre, Thiruvananthapuram.
This Samudrayaan project is mainly enabled to examine and explore the ocean resources such as mines and clean energy and to develop a blue economy.
The concept of the blue economy is to establish social equity and human wellbeing to reduce the hazardous effects on the environment. This project is also meant for deep space mining and aims at the exploration to become a reality.
Scientists are working on keeping India in an elite club of specific countries. Those are USA, Russia, China, Japan, and France, which already can launch deep ocean manned missions. Once this deep ocean mission becomes successful, India will also be a part of that elite club.
In this project, under MATSYA 6000 plan, three persons will be part of the dive into the ocean. One person is the pilot, and the other two are scientists. The submersible will dive into the sea up to 6000 meters. The duration of the dive will be up to 12 hours. It will be capable of staying up to 16 hours under the water. ISRO, IIAM, and DRDO are dropped in this project to support the program.
The minister has already stated that the trials of 500 meters dive in the shallow water version of manned deep-ocean submersible will be taken in the year last quarter of 2022.
They expect that 6000 meters deep ocean manned submersible will be ready by the second quarter of 2024.
