The country’s first domestically designed and built deep-ocean drilling vessel, dubbed the Meng Xiang, was officially commissioned in Guangzhou on Sunday, state media reported.
The multi-purpose ship is reportedly the first in the world able to use deep-ocean drilling for scientific research, oil and gas exploration, and the investigation of natural gas hydrate.
The Meng Xiang has a maximum drill depth of 11 kilometres, a range of 15,000 nautical miles, and can self-support its crew of 180 people for 120 days. Equipped with a ground-breaking hydraulic lifting rig, it can explore oil and gas deposits as well as undertake core sampling from an area between the Earth’s crust and mantle, known as the Mohorovicic discontinuity.
[See more: Oceans warming because of climate change are seeing a rise in toxic contaminants]
Retrieving such deep core samples will “aid humanity in better understanding, protecting, and utilising the oceans,” according to the director of the Guangzhou Marine Geological Survey, Xu Zhenqiang, explaining that the samples could be used to study plate tectonics, oceanic crust evolution, ancient marine climates and the evolution of life.
There are nine advanced laboratories aboard the Meng Xiang, specialising in areas from geology and geochemistry to microbiology, ocean science and drilling technology.
Sea trials have shown that the ship exceeds initial performance expectations, according to Zhang Haibin, its chief designer. The Meng Xiang has been built to withstand super typhoons and, according to state media, “is capable of global missions in unrestricted waters.”
