The underwater glider in tests (Xinhua Photo)
After taking a beautiful whirl near the propeller of its mothership "Tansuo-1" (Explorer-1), China's "Haiyi" (Sea-Wing) underwater glider headed into the deep sea. Around 12 hours later, it created a new world record.
Recently, the underwater glider, developed by the Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully completed deep-sea dive observation missions and achieved recovery safely at Challenger Deep, which is located in the Mariana Trench.
Its diving depth record of 6,329 meters beat the world record of 6,000 meters. The result of this trial will help the Sea-Wing further improve and enhance its diving depth in the future.
The Sea-Wing is designed for the application of deep-sea environment variable observation, and is a useful platform for oceanic environmental observation.
It has an individual integrated attitude (pitch and roll) regulating mechanism, which makes the attitude regulating unit more compact. The modularized design of the scientific measurement sensor unit also allows the glider to be used for multiple applications by fitting out corresponding measurement sensors. In addition, the Sea-Wing has possessed the capability of measuring temperature, conductivity, and other marine environment variables of seawater.
"The Sea-Wing finished 12 dive observations in total during this voyage. Its cumulative working hours reached 87 hours 48 minutes, and cumulative navigation distance reached 134.6 km." said Luo Yeteng, assistant researcher from Shenyang Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The scientific investigation made by the Sea-Wing has collected a large number of high resolution information about the water around the abyss and will provide important data for the marine scientists to study the hydrological characteristics of these areas.
