DeepFlight Challenger point of each of the world's five oceans, the Mariana Trench of the Pacific Ocean (36,201 ft), the Puerto Rico Trench of the Atlantic Ocean (28,232 ft), the Diamantina Trench of the Indian Ocean (26,401 ft), South Sandwich Trench of the Southern Ocean (23,737 ft), and Molloy Deep of the Arctic Ocean (18,399 ft). The Cheyenne yacht will be used as the mothership for the dive efforts. It was planned that Branson would pilot the sub to the Puerto Rico Trench, while Chris Welsh would pilot it for the Mariana Trench dive. Virgin Oceanic had hoped to be the first
Tonga Trench it; the summit of the guyot is tilted 1.7° towards the trench and its centre is only from the trench axis. The Capricorn Seamount is expected to be completely consumed by the trench within 500,000 years. Tonga Trench The Tonga Trench is an oceanic trench located in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is the deepest trench of the Southern Hemisphere and the second deepest on Earth. The fastest plate tectonic velocity on Earth occurs as the Pacific Plate is being subducted westward in the trench. When the Apollo 13 mission was aborted in 1970 following an explosion in an oxygen