- Samudrayaan is India’s first manned ocean mission launched with an aim to better understand ocean ecology by having niche technology and vehicles to carry out subsea activities.
- Samudrayaan Mission aims to humans into the deep sea in a submersible vehicle for deep-ocean exploration and mining of rare minerals.
- Samudrayaan Mission is a project of Ministry of Earth Sciences under its Deep Ocean Mission Project.
- The projected timeline of Samudrayaan Mission is five years for the period 2020-2021 to 2025-2026.
- Samudrayaan mission is aimed at sending three personnel to 6000-metre depth in a vehicle called ‘MATSYA 6000’ for the exploration of deep sea resources like minerals.
- National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), an autonomous institute under MoES, is entrusted with the responsibility to develop various technologies related to the Samudrayaan Mission.
MATSYA 6000
- It is an indigenously developed manned submersible vehicle.
- It will facilitate the MoES in conducting deep ocean exploration of resources such as gas hydrates, polymetallic manganese nodules, hydro-thermal sulfides, and cobalt crusts which are located at an approximate depth between 1000 and 5500 metres.
- Polymetallic Nodules, also called manganese nodules, are mineral concretions on the sea bottom formed of concentric layers of iron and manganese hydroxides around a core.
Source - Chronicle, TOI