The "Mengxiang" (Dream) drills ocean-basin basalt at 4,100 m water depth in the South China Sea
During the National Day holiday I came across a piece of news that genuinely excited me: the ocean drilling vessel "Mengxiang" (Dream) has finished a 30-day trial drilling voyage in the South China Sea and returned to Guangzhou. According to the China Geological Survey, the voyage drilled and cored two holes in waters about 4,100 m deep in the South China Sea and successfully recovered basalt samples from the South China Sea ocean basin.
I made a point of noting down a few figures: the voyage reached a maximum total drilling depth of 4,929.17 m and a maximum penetration of 864.77 m, setting a new record for the deepest operating water depth of any drilling carried out independently by China. Using a rotary coring tool it developed in-house, the team brought up a basalt core 4.27 m long.
According to the report, this makes China the third country, after the United States and Japan, to recover hard-rock samples from a deep ocean basin with a drilling vessel. Its deep-sea drilling and coring capability has been raised to the 5,000 m class, and the core recovery rate exceeded 100% on several runs.
To me, the most interesting thing about these cores is that they can provide first-hand material for studying how the South China Sea opened up and evolved. They also show that China's own core drilling equipment has stood the test of ultra-deep-water conditions. I'm looking forward to the research that comes out of this.
Source: 人民网（人民日报海外版）
I made a point of noting down a few figures: the voyage reached a maximum total drilling depth of 4,929.17 m and a maximum penetration of 864.77 m, setting a new record for the deepest operating water depth of any drilling carried out independently by China. Using a rotary coring tool it developed in-house, the team brought up a basalt core 4.27 m long.
According to the report, this makes China the third country, after the United States and Japan, to recover hard-rock samples from a deep ocean basin with a drilling vessel. Its deep-sea drilling and coring capability has been raised to the 5,000 m class, and the core recovery rate exceeded 100% on several runs.
To me, the most interesting thing about these cores is that they can provide first-hand material for studying how the South China Sea opened up and evolved. They also show that China's own core drilling equipment has stood the test of ultra-deep-water conditions. I'm looking forward to the research that comes out of this.
Source: 人民网（人民日报海外版）
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