The design of the interior of the sphere, including fireproofing, condensation management and mounting of control assemblies, was undertaken by Sydney-based industrial design consultancy Design + Industry. The crucial structural elements, such as the backbone and pilot sphere that carried Cameron, were engineered by the Tasmanian company Finite Elements.

During dives, the control system also recorded depth, heading, temperature, pressure, battery status, and other data, and sent it to the support ship at three-minute intervals via an underwater acoustic communication system developed by West Australian company L-3 Nautronix. These interconnected systems are monitored and controlled by a programmable logic controller (PLC) from Temecula, California-based controls manufacturer Opto 22. The submersible contains over 180 onboard systems, including batteries, thrusters, life support, 3D cameras, and LED lighting. The lithium battery charging systems were designed by Ron Allum. Power systems for the submarine were supplied by lithium batteries that were housed within the foam and can be clearly seen through clear plastic panels. Allum gained much of his experience developing the electronic communication used in Cameron's Titanic dives in filming Ghosts of the Abyss, Bismarck and others. These include pressure-balanced oil-filled thrusters LED lighting arrays new types of cameras and fast, reliable penetration communication cables allowing transmissions through the hull of the submersible. The foam supersedes gasoline-filled tanks for flotation as used in the historic bathyscaphe Trieste.Īllum also built many innovations, necessary to overcome the limitations of existing products (and presently undergoing development for other deep sea vehicles). The foam's strength enabled the Deepsea Challenger designers to incorporate thruster motors as part of the infrastructure mounted within the foam but without the aid of a steel skeleton to mount various mechanisms. The foam is composed of very small hollow glass spheres suspended in an epoxy resin and comprises about 70% of the submersible's volume.

The new foam is unique in that it is more homogeneous and possesses greater uniform strength than other commercially available syntactic foam yet, with a specific density of about 0.7, will float in water. Working in a small engineering workshop in Leichhardt, Sydney, Allum created new materials including a specialized structural syntactic foam called Isofloat, capable of withstanding the huge compressive forces at the 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) depth. Many of the submersible developer team members hail from Sydney's cave-diving fraternity including Allum himself with many years of cave-diving experience. The construction of the submersible was headed by Australian engineer Ron Allum. Development ĭeepsea Challenger was built in Australia, in partnership with the National Geographic Society and with support from Rolex, in the Deepsea Challenge program. Built in Sydney, Australia, by the research and design company Acheron Project Pty Ltd, Deepsea Challenger includes scientific sampling equipment and high-definition 3-D cameras it reached the ocean's deepest point after two hours and 36 minutes of descent from the surface. On 26 March 2012, Canadian film director James Cameron piloted the craft to accomplish this goal in the second crewed dive reaching the Challenger Deep. Drawing of the DCV1, based on imagery from the Deepsea Challenger website (not to scale)ĭeepsea Challenger (DCV 1) is a 7.3-metre (24 ft) deep-diving submersible designed to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest-known point on Earth.

Submarine drawing 3d