Deep Ocean Mission & Samudrayaan

Samudrayaan is India's bid to put humans on the deep-ocean floor: a crewed descent to 6,000 metres inside Matsya-6000, an indigenous titanium-sphere submersible built by NIOT under the Ministry of Earth Sciences' Deep Ocean Mission. In early 2025 the vessel cleared harbour wet tests near Chennai, and that August two NIOT aquanauts logged the country's first 5,000-metre dives, though aboard a French submersible rather than Matsya itself. Succeed at full depth and India joins the handful of nations able to send people that deep, unlocking the mineral-rich fields of polymetallic nodules and a largely untapped blue economy.