Trieste (Bathyscaphe)

Trieste was a deep-sea submersible bathyscaphe designed to explore the ocean's greatest depths. Built in the 1950s and operated by the Italian Navy and American scientists, it had a spherical, pressure-resistant cabin filled with gasoline for buoyancy. In 1960, Trieste successfully reached the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, about 36,000 feet below the surface—making it the first manned vessel to descend to the deepest part of the Earth's oceans. Its mission expanded our understanding of the deep sea environment and demonstrated human capability to explore extreme, previously unreachable depths.