If Land of the Lost taught me anything , it ’s that cool things lurk just below the surface of the globe ( and Will Ferrel is the with child thespian of his generation ) . That ’s where the Chikyu Hakken Deep Sea Drill comes in .
The Deep Sea Drilling Vessel D / V Chikyū Hakken ( “ Earth Discovery ” aka “ Godzilla - Maru ” ) is a Japanese scientific boring ship completed in 2005 for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and is operated by the Japanese Center for Deep Earth Research . It ’s design to bore seven kilometers beneath the seabed and into the Earth ’s mantle , deeper than any preceding ocean - drill hole . Once into the mantle , the Chikyu will study and collect sample from the seismogenic zone , shedding light on the intragroup structure of the major planet and how it affects the shaping of Earthquakes , as well as look for the presence of undiscovered life in the Earth ’s crust and mysterious - sea resources .
The Chikyu is 210 meter long , 38 meters broad and over 16 meters high . It weighs in at roughly 57,087 tons and a top amphetamine of 12 air mile . rise 70 one thousand above the deck ( 100 m above the body of water ) , the amidships derrick has a lifting capacity of 1,250 ton and use a 10,000 m Mandrillus leucophaeus string — three times long than the height of Mt. Fuji . The Chikyu supports 150 crewmembers , admit 50 science staff office with at - ocean gang changes and resupplies handled via chopper transfer . Since the Chikyu ca n’t move once it starts drilling , the ship is equipped with an in advance GPS system and six computer - ensure , 3.8m - across-the-board azimuth thrusters that work to antagonize the upshot of tides and currents , keeping the ship directly above the bore site . It also utilise a riser system to negate moving ridge natural process , appropriate the rig to exercise in waters as deep as 2,500 meters .
The Chikyu drills at a varying rate , bet on how rich its gotten . It dilute through 15m / hr down to 1000 m , 8m / hr down to 2000 m , but only 3m / hr below that . Once the pipe hit 4000 m , it takes approximately 6 hours to fish out and interchange a drawn drill bit . At those rate , the Chikyu will have to remain stationary in the sea for over a yr to reach its 7,000 meter goal .
The actual subroutine for amaze down there go a little something like this : The gravy holder positions itself above the eagre site using Global Positioning System and transponders on the sea floor . The system also measures the external forces acting upon the boat and precisely counters them using the azimuth thruster , keep it from drifting more than 15 feet away . The drill drawing string is then extended to the sea floor where it starts eating through the Earth ’s cheekiness . Every few hundred feet , a 31 - foot rock sample distribution is fished from the line and its chemical properties are analyzed . This process continues until the team ( hopefully ) score mantle somewhere 7000 mebibyte down .
The Chikyu was damaged in the Japanese earthquake earlier this year . Though it was bob at Hachinohe , more than 250 kilometers northwards of Sendai , the speedy change in weewee level caused it to scrape bottom , snapped off one of the six thrusters , and gashed a 1.5 meter pickle in the hull . Repairs were only recently completed at the end of June .
[ IODP – Jamstec ( Expedition)–Chikyu Wiki – Jamstec ( Equipment)–Popular Science ]
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