ABOARD XIANGYANGHONG 09 - China's manned deep-sea submersible, Jiaolong, made its first dive in the Mariana Trench on Friday, as part of a bid to go down as deep as 7,000 meters.
The dive, which is the first of a series of scheduled six ones and began at 9 am local time (2300 GMT Thursday), will attempt to reach a depth of 5,000 meters and last eight hours.