China is planning to send a crewed submersible to explore the polar seabed as part of its growing ambitions in the Arctic Ocean.
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The vessel has been designed to drop through a hole in the hull of the polar research vessel Tan Suo San Hao (Explorer Three), according to the developer, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation’s 704th Research Institute.
The developer said it had carried out a series of tests, including underwater docking and low-temperature operations, but has not disclosed many details of the vessel.
It said the country had previously been forced to rely on foreign technology but had now developed its own systems that “can be widely used in the future for polar scientific research, deep-sea oil and gas mineral resource exploration and production, seabed pipeline construction and maintenance [and] search and rescue operations”.
Polar research vessels are limited in what they can do by the presence of ice floes, so sending vessels underwater is a way round the problem, but the extreme conditions pose a considerable technological challenge.
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So far only Russia has sent a crewed vessel onto the Arctic seabed – the 2007 Arktika mission – meaning China may become the second country to do so.
The institute also designed a set of equipment for the mother ship to support deep-sea research, including a 10,000-metre (32,800ft) winch system and a deployment and recovery system for the submersible.