Research Vehicle Reaches the Bottom of the Ocean

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday June 2, 2009 @02:44PM from the ah-ooo-gah dept.

timothy found BBC coverage of the voyage of the Nereus, which on May 31 dove to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Marianas Trench. Only two vehicles have accomplished this feat before, the last 11 years ago. "The unmanned vehicle is remotely operated by pilots aboard a surface ship via a lightweight tether. Its thin, fibre-optic tether to the research vessel Kilo Moana allows the submersible to make deep dives and be highly manoeuvrable. Nereus can also be switched into a free-swimming, autonomous vehicle. ... The Challenger Deep... is the deepest abyss on Earth at 11,000m-deep, more than 2km (1.2 miles) deeper than Mount Everest is high. At that depth, pressures reach 1,100 times those at the surface."

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Twists in the fiber optic cable by FranTaylor · 2009-06-02 20:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

I worked on an ROV simulation back in the 90's and we needed to keep track of how many times the ROV turned around because twists accumulate in the cable. At some point you may have to sit in place and spin for a bit to undo the twists. Terrible things happen when the tether gets too twisted.