On October 11, 1984, geologist Kathryn D. Sullivan became the first U.S. woman to take a walk in space, spending more than three hours outside the Challenger shuttle in Earth's orbit. Yesterday the now 68-year-old former NASA astronaut and three-time veteran of flights on the Space Shuttle set another record. Together with retired naval officer, successful investor, and undersea explorer Victor Lance Vescovo (born 1966), she became the first woman (and 8th person in history) to reach the deepest point on Earth's surface, the 10.984 meters deep Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan’s official astronaut portrait.
Only three other dives have reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench. In 1960, United States Navy officer Don Walsh and oceanographer Jacques Piccard, as part of a Navy exercise, went down 10.916 meters in bathyscaphe Trieste. In 2012, Titanic filmmaker James Cameron used the Deepsea Challenger submarine to reach a depth of 10.907 meters. In 2019, Vescovo reached the bottom of the Mariana Trench in his submarine called Limiting Factor - a privately funded exploration vessel built by Triton Submarines and currently the only vehicle in the world able to dive more than 10.000 meters deep.
Sullivan studied earth sciences at the University of California and Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada. While at Dalhousie, she participated in several oceanographic expeditions that explored the sea floors of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Using submersibles, her research team studied the volcanic processes that form the ocean crust, a pioneering novelty at the time. During yesterday's dive, the expedition team measured parameters like water temperature and salinity, mapped the ocean floor, and collected samples of sediments and organisms.
At the moment, Kathy Sullivan is chatting with colleagues onboard the International Space Station from inside the Caladan Oceanic’s pressure chamber, but promised to share impressions and photos of her adventure in the coming days on her personal blog.
