Deep-Sea Drilling Record
China sets national deep-sea drilling record with vessel trial in South China Sea.
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China’s Mengxiang ocean-drilling vessel set a national deep-sea drilling record during a 30-day trial in the South China Sea, reaching a water depth of 4,929 meters and drilling 865 meters into the seabed, according to the Ministry of Natural Resources. The vessel recovered a 4.27-meter basalt core using domestically developed equipment, making China the third country, after the United States and Japan, to retrieve hard-rock samples from a deep-ocean basin with a drilling ship. Officials said the trial validated the vessel’s systems for operations at the 5,000-meter level and established a coring system that met international program benchmarks.
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The trial also produced core-recovery rates above 100 percent in several operations, indicating that recovered material sometimes exceeded the length of the drilled interval.
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The team developed a risk-prevention and emergency-response system for the challenges of ultra-deep-water drilling.
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Ship-based remotely operated vehicles conducted long-duration coordinated work for the first time: two ROVs logged more than 358 combined working hours at 4,000 meters, including a continuous operation lasting as long as 103 hours.
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