Photo: Xinhua

 
China's new deep-sea manned submersible Fendouzhe (Striver) successfully passed comprehensive performance evaluation on Sunday, marking a new milestone in the country's capabilities in deep-sea technologies and in ocean detection and research.

This is the first time to implement evaluation mechanism for China's key research and development projects and experts involved have spoken highly of the project, Li Huajun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and leader of the evaluation expert team, was quoted as saying by China Central Television on Sunday.

Aiming to boost the country's science and technology capabilities, Ministry of Science and Technology in 2019 released evaluation mechanism for China's key research and development projects. 

Li said Striver's passage of the comprehensive performance evaluation marks China's remarkable achievement in deep-sea exploration and represented China's comprehensive strength in the field of marine high technology.

Striver set a national record by diving to a depth of 10,909 meters in the Mariana Trench in November 2020. The record-making dive was enabled by several deep-sea technologies involving materials, energy supply and communications.

According to Xinhua News Agency, the development of homemade Striver, which began in 2016, has involved nearly 1,000 scientists and researchers from about 100 domestic research institutions, colleges and enterprises. 

Striver adopts a safe and powerful energy system, a domestically developed control and positioning system. Its cabin and buoyancy materials are more pressure-resistant compared with its predecessors, the Xinhua report said. 

Global Times