JAMSTEC's Kaiko reaches the Challenger Deep floor
The Japanese remotely operated vehicle Kaiko descends to the floor of the Challenger Deep, reporting a depth commonly cited around 10,911 m and returning sediment samples. It demonstrates that robots, not only crewed spheres, can work at full ocean depth - and adds another value to the widening set of published depths.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- Challenger Deep · site · Western Pacific Ocean - southern Mariana Trench
- Hadal Zone · ocean_zone · Global ocean - subduction trench systems · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Kaiko full-ocean-depth ROV operations at the Challenger Deep
In March 1995 the ROV Kaiko reached the floor of the Challenger Deep — the second vehicle ever to do so and the first since Trieste in 1960 — with a maximum depth on that dive reported as 10,911.4 m, one value in a cluster of published figures that do not agree. Kaiko dived the Challenger Deep more than twenty times before its secondary cable parted at 4,675 m on 29 May 2003 and the vehicle was lost. V55 verification basis: the programme records and the ISOPE loss papers were retrieved in summary rather than read in full — this session has no direct network access to jamstec.go.jp.
JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology) · March 1995; vehicle lost May 2003 · Partly verified
JAMSTEC Kaiko programme records, March 1995 Challenger Deep dive — https://www.jamstec.go.jp/e/about/equipment/ships/kaiko.html; loss of the vehicle described in Nakajoh et al., "Loss of the full ocean depth ROV Kaiko, Part 1: ROV Kaiko — a review", ISOPE (2004)
Recorded on Challenger Deep
- HMS Challenger sounds the deep that will bear her name
- Trieste reaches the bottom of the Challenger Deep
- JAMSTEC's Kaiko reaches the Challenger Deep floor
- Multibeam survey reports a 10,984 m maximum sounding
- First solo crewed dive to the Challenger Deep
- So, How Deep Is the Mariana Trench? asks the question in print
- Five Deeps Expedition dives the Challenger Deep four times
- Submersible pressure transects across the Challenger Deep floor
- Revised depth of the Challenger Deep published
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Revised depth of the Challenger Deep published · 2021
- Submersible pressure transects across the Challenger Deep floor · 2020-06
- Five Deeps Expedition dives the Challenger Deep four times · 2019-04-28/2019-05-07
- So, How Deep Is the Mariana Trench? asks the question in print · 2014
- First solo crewed dive to the Challenger Deep · 2012
- Multibeam survey reports a 10,984 m maximum sounding · 2010
- Trieste reaches the bottom of the Challenger Deep · 1960-01-23
- HMS Challenger sounds the deep that will bear her name · 1875