The sky is no longer the limit for India. Having conquered outer space through its Space Docking Experiment (SpaDeX) mission in January this year, it’s now ready to master the deep blue sea.
The South Asian giant has embarked on an ambitious expedition titled, Samudrayaan, placing it among a small elite club of nations with the technological capacity and expertise to conduct undersea research and exploration.
By joining this select group of nations – the United States, Russia, Japan, France, and China – India will benefit from the blue economy, unlock mineral resources, and develop deep-sea technologies for sustainable resource management as well as ocean-related tourism.
The Samudrayaan mission is an extension of the Government of India’s vision of the Blue Economy as one of the ten core dimensions of growth in the country with a 7517 km long coastline, which is home to nine coastal states and 1,382 islands.
Samudrayaan will see Indian scientists diving 6000 meters beneath the surface of the ocean, marking India’s first manned dive to such depths.
Central to the mission is a self-propelled manned submersible called, Matsya 6000, designed to carry three people, with an endurance capacity of 12 hours under normal operation and 96 hours in an emergency.
Designed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), Matsya will facilitate biological sampling, mineral exploration, and environmental monitoring.
Sumadrayaan will retrieve data and samples to advance marine science, pharmaceutical research, and climate modeling.
A 500-metre test dive is planned for the end of this year with plans for the full 6,000-metre descent taking place in stages. Each dive is expected to last about eight hours.
The Matsya 6000 is a fourth-generation, indigenously designed manned submersible engineered to maintain an internal pressure of 1 atmosphere, despite facing more than 600 times the surface pressure at full depth. It will be deployed and recovered using India’s research vessel Sagar Nidhi.
According to India’s Ministry of Earth Sciences, “The manned submersible will allow scientific personnel to observe and understand unexplored deep sea areas by direct interventions. Further, it will enhance the capability for deepsea man-rated vehicle development.”
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Deep-sea exploration is costly and technically challenging, accessible to a select few countries with the necessary resources and expertise. It requires specialised equipment, like submersibles and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), as well as the know-how to operate them and analyze the collected data.
The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), developed 6000 m depth- rated Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) and underwater instruments such as Autonomous Coring System (ACS), Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV), and Deep Sea Mining System (DSM) Sciences (MoES) to facilitate India’s sea exploration ambitions.
Samudrayaan is a mission of national importance giving India the capacity to swim with the big fish of deep-sea scientific exploration, by enabling New Delhi to extend its reach from beyond the skies to the depths of the blue ocean.