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Abstract
HMS Challenger made the first sounding of Challenger Deep in 1875 of 8184 m. Many have since claimed depths deeper than Challenger's 8184 m, but few have provided details of how the determination was made. In 2010, the Mariana Trench was mapped with a Kongsberg Maritime EM122 multibeam echosounder and recorded the deepest sounding of 10,984 ± 25 m (95%) at 11.329903°N/142.199305°E. The depth was determined with an update of the HGM uncertainty model combined with the Lomb-Scargle periodogram technique and a modal estimate of depth. Position uncertainty was determined from multiple DGPS receivers and a POS/MV motion sensor.
Acknowledgements
We thank the officers and crew of the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office USNS Sumner (T-AGS 61) and the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office science parties for their cooperation during the cruise. This work was supported by NOAA grants NA05NOS4001153 and NA10NOS4000073 and ship time was funded by NOAA. Russian translations were provided by Y. Rzhanov and V. Schmidt provided some preliminary statistical analyses of the soundings. We thank L. Mayer and D. Monahan for constructive reviews of earlier versions of the manuscript.