Indian aquanauts go 5K metres deep into ocean
New Delhi: Around a month after Shubhanshu Shukla became the first Indian to reach the International Space Station, India sent an aquanaut 5,000 metres deep into the ocean in a first-of-its-kind expedition earlier this month.
Conducted in partnership with France, two Indian aquanauts successfully completed one deep dive each in the North Atlantic Ocean in the French submersible “Nautile” on August 5 and 6 as part of preparations for India’s ambitious Deep Ocean Mission.
Raju Ramesh, a scientist at the National Institute of Ocean Technology, went 4,025 metres down on August 5, followed by a deep dive of 5,002 metres by Indian Navy Commander (retd) Jatinder Pal Singh on August 6.
Union Earth Sciences Minister Jitendra Singh said: “We have an Indian going into space and an Indian going into the deep ocean almost simultaneously.”
“India’s quest for a double conquest has already taken off... into space and into the deep ocean and that will mark the beginning of value addition to India’s economic growth story from two sectors that have remained relatively underexplored or totally unexplored in the last seven to eight decades,” he said.
He said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken such a keen interest in the Deep Ocean Mission and blue economy that he spoke about it in his Independence Day speech twice -- in 2022 and 2023.
Singh said: “India may have one Indian going into space in an Indian spaceship and simultaneously one or more Indians going into the deep ocean in an indigenously developed submersible.”
M Ravichandran, Secretary in the Ministry of Earth Sciences, said, “This expedition was conducted as part of India’s Deep Ocean Mission. One of the verticals of the DOM aims to develop technology to harness non-living ocean resources and a submersible which can carry humans to the deepest parts of the ocean for exploration... To gain firsthand experience before we do it in our own submersible, a five-member NIOT team participated in deep dives in the French submersible ‘Nautile’ under Indo-French research collaboration.”
