"From sea level to Everest? About 70 percent less air pressure at the summit than at sea level (1013 millibars to 253). summiting Everest and reaching the bottom of the Challenger Deep such wildly different challenges is air pressure," she wrote. "If you put Everest into the Challenger Deep, its summit would be more than a mile below sea level," Sullivan wrote on her website (opens in new tab) documenting her expedition. On May 19, 2009, Scott Parazynski summited Mount Everest (opens in new tab), two years after his fifth and final space shuttle mission. With Sullivan's dive to Challenger Deep, astronauts have now been to the lowest and highest points on Earth. "An incredible opportunity and huge step for science!" Caladan Oceanic wrote on Twitter (opens in new tab) of the sea to space connection. (Image credit: Caladan Oceanic)įollowing her dive, Sullivan had the opportunity to call the astronauts aboard the International Space Station to share her experience. In total, she logged 22 days off the planet over the course of her three space shuttle missions between 19.Ĭaladan Oceanic's "Limiting Factor," the first commercially-certified full-ocean-depth deep submergence vehicle. In space, orbiting between 220 and 380 miles (350 and 615 km) above Earth, Sullivan helped demonstrate satellite refueling during her historic 3-hour and 29-minute extravehicular activity (EVA, or spacewalk), assisted in the deploy of the Hubble Space Telescope (opens in new tab) and conducted atmospheric research. That's what I was heading toward and aiming everything towards until NASA came along," Sullivan said in a 2007 NASA oral history interview (opens in new tab). be able to actually go down and see the deep-sea floor myself, do the volcanology part of marine geology and geophysics, and get to dive. "My specific aspiration through all of graduate school was to. astronauts to include women, Sullivan was on one of the first cruises to utilize a submersible to study the volcanic processes that make the ocean crust. Prior to joining NASA in 1978 as a member of the first group of U.S. The view at the bottom of Challenger Deep, looking out from the "Limiting Factor" submersible at the automated lander "Skaff" and the "Raptor" hydraulic manipulator, June 7, 2020. The Limiting Factor is outfitted with a Kraft Telerobotics "Raptor" hydraulic manipulator, a claw with a 5-foot (1.5-m) reach. Sullivan (opens in new tab), a retired naval oceanographer, geologist and the former administrator of NOAA, received robotics training before departing for the dive to assist in collecting samples off the ocean floor. Among the other team members scheduled to dive is Kelly Walsh, whose father, Don Walsh, was first to reach Challenger Deep with Jacques Piccard on board the Trieste research bathyscaphe 60 years ago.
Exclusive Economic Zone at the request of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Over the course of as many as eight dives, the Caladan Oceanic team hopes to observe volcanic vents, identify new species of deep sea marine life and map the U.S.
Navy ship that was specially retrofitted for this expedition, Vescovo and Sullivan explored the eastern pool of Challenger Deep as part of a planned series of scientific dives that will survey the three pools that comprise the slot-shaped depression. (Image credit: Kathy Sullivan)ĭeployed from the support vessel "Pressure Drop," a former U.S. Former astronaut Kathy Sullivan and explorer Victor Vescovo are seen aboard the "Limiting Factor" deep sea submersible at the bottom of Challenger Deep, Sunday, June 7, 2020.