The mother ship for a new deep-sea submersible was delivered to its owner, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), on May 5 in the city of Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

The 94-meter "Tansuo-1" (meaning “explorer”) has a full-load displacement of 6, 250 tones, said Yang Ning, head of the technical division of Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering (IDSSE), CAS.

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

The ship will serve as the mother ship for a new submersible currently under development and for future CAS expeditions to sea floor trenches, Yang said.

It will sail from Guangzhou on May 6 to the city of Sanya, Hainan province for off-shore test voyage.

If all goes well, the ship will sail on to the Mariana Trench for a research mission in the near future, Yang said.

The new manned submersible,which can reach a depth of 4,500 meters, is likely to go through off-shore testing in the first half of next year.

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

Source: Xinhua