DEEPSEA CHALLENGER PHOTOS….!!!!!!

Launched from the Mermaid Sapphire, the sub relies on 180 different systems, from battery packs to sonar.

DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, to take him down to the Mariana Trench.

After two months of testing DEEPSEA CHALLENGER on shallower dives, Cameron was poised above the deepest place on Earth. No one had imagined diving in seas this rough. A key safety system had failed. But it was now, or never.

After two months of testing DEEPSEA CHALLENGER on shallower dives, Cameron was poised above the deepest place on Earth. No one had imagined diving in seas this rough. A key safety system had failed. But it was now, or never.

Divers wrangle a 3-D camera while filming a test in the New Britain Trench off Papua New Guinea. The sub bristles with lights, cameras, and scientific equipment.

DEEPSEA CHALLENGER bobs in the water, with Cameron inside, following the successful Mariana Trench dive on March 26, 2012. A diver needed split-second timing to recover the sub: Riding atop the submersible, he had to grab a swinging crane hook, then attach it to the sub’s lifting point.

A panel of LED lights illuminates the bottom during a test dive off the Ulithi Atoll. Sediment samples later collected in the Mariana Trench revealed previously unknown microorganisms.