China completes building mother ship for new submersible

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

The 94-meter "Tansuo-1" has a full-load displacement of 6,250 tonnes, said Yang Ning, head of the technical division of the CAS Institute for Deep-sea Science and Engineering.

Tansuo-1 has an 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 of sea floor trenches, Yang said.
It will sail from Guangzhou on Friday to Sanya, Hainan Province for off-shore tests.

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 that 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.