SV Krishna Chaitanya By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: AT a time when India has announced its plans for human spaceflight ‘Gaganyaan’, a Chennai-based institute is working on sending a human crew deep into the ocean.

The city-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) is looking to collaborate with the ISRO on India’s first manned submersible vehicle.

ISRO’s technical guidance has been sought as some of the core systems will be similar to spaceflight.

Madhavan Nair Rajeevan, Secretary, Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), told Express that discussion with ISRO officials are in final stages and a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) will be signed between the two premier institutions very shortly.

“A sphere shaped capsule made of titanium will be used to accommodate a three-member crew,” he said and added that help from Russian experts may be sought if needed. When realised, India will be among a few nations having capability to send a man underwater in a craft.

NIOT director MA Atmanand, who has done pioneeing work in deep sea technologies, said the design of the manned submersible was developed ingeniously, although some of the information available in the open source was utilised.

"The project will be more complex than the space missions. The craft at a depth of six km undersea will take astonishing pressure of something like 600 bar. Also, the communication between the mother ship and the craft will be limited. Once launched into the sea, the vehicle will be on its own. The pilot will have to navigate the vehicle and certain contingency measures will be put in place for the crew to escape in case of an emergency," he said.

As of now, US, Russia, France, Japan and China have conducted manned deep-sea expeditions. "The project will cost a little over Rs 200 crore," NIOT director said.MoES secretary said since India is pumping huge amounts into Deep Sea Mission and NIOT taking the lead in developing deep sea mining systems, "having a functional manned underwater craft will be handy."

Government of India has an area of 75,000 sq km in the Central Indian Ocean Basin for carrying out survey and exploration of potato-shaped polymetallic nodules (manganese nodules), found in abundance carpeting the sea floor.

Deep-sea Technologies and Ocean Mining Group of NIOT has already developed the crawler and a soil tester that will determine the characteristics of the soil on the sea bed where the crawler is deployed.

However, Atmanand said the main objective of developing a manned submersible is not its use for deep sea mining. "The vehicle can be used for general deep sea exploration mission like studying less known marine life, inspecting undersea volcanoes among others."