Amid search for Titan, lessons for proposed Indian submersible dive

Subject : Science and technology

Section: MSc

Concept:

With hope dwindling on the chances of survival of those in the Titan submersible, scientists in India, preparing to undertake a similar dive in an indigenous vehicle late next year.

About Matsya:

Matsya 6000 is an Indian crewed deep-submergence vehicle intended to be utilised for deep-sea exploration of rare minerals under the Deep Ocean mission or Samudrayaan mission at a depth of 6000 metres.
Matsya, which literally translates to “fish” in Hindi, is a specialised vehicle that can carry a total of three passengers.
Matsya-6000 also has syntactic foam, a flotation device that would rise to the top.
It will help determine the physical location of the submersible, even if it were unable to resurface.

Purpose:

This vehicle is a platform to carry any devices, sensors, etc to the deep-sea for doing experiments/observations in the presence of a human being.
It will help in augmenting India’s capability with infrastructure facilities such as a high thickness welding facility and deep ocean simulator.
The manned submersible is aimed at exploring oceans and to survey the ocean bed and collecting data and samples.

Samudrayan mission

The goal of the Samudrayaan Mission is to develop a self-propelled manned submersible that is capable of carrying three people to a depth of 6,000 metres in the ocean.
This submersible will also be outfitted with a collection of scientific sensors and instruments for use in deep ocean research.
People from the scientific community will be able to directly observe and examine previously unmapped parts of the deep.
In addition to this, it will improve the capability of constructing man-rated vehicles for use in deep water environments.
The period is anticipated to be five years, beginning in 2020-2021 and ending in 2025-2026.