Chennai: India’s deep ocean manned submersible, Matsya-6000, which will take three scientists 6000m deep into the ocean is closer to realization. The vehicle will undergo a shallow-water demonstration at 500m depth at Kattupali Port near Chennai by the end of 2025.
Earlier this month, the vehicle successfully underwent wet tests — both unmanned and manned — to demonstrate its functionality. The fourth-generation deep-ocean human scientific submersible, built by the city-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) as part of the Deep Ocean Mission, can accommodate three people within a compact 2.1m diameter spherical hull and carry them deep into the ocean to explore minerals.
“In the shallow-water demonstration, the vehicle will be taken onboard a ship which will have the facility to launch and recover. At a chosen location, we will begin the test at a diving depth of 20-30m and increase the depth in stages of 100m, 300m, and 500m. Both the vehicle operation and the onboard scientific payloads will be tested,” an NIOT scientist said.
“After the completion of the shallow-water demonstration, the 6,000m spherical hull will be populated with the vehicle and other systems to go for 6,000m qualification in stages during 2026,” he added.
When the vehicle is ready for deep-sea exploration, India will join an elite group of countries — US, Russia, Japan, France, and China — that have an indigenous manned submersible. Between Jan 27 and Feb 12, the wet test was conducted at the LT shipbuilding facility at Kattupalli Port.