From Xinhuanet, China's manned deep-sea submersible, Jiaolong, made its first dive in the Mariana Trench on Friday, as part of a bid to go down as deep as 7,000 meters.

YANG Bo from IACAS assumes the first dive task with YE Cong who is the oceanaut and first sea driver and CUI Weicheng, the vice design director of Jiaolong.

The dive, which began at 9 a.m., is the first of a series of six scheduled ones to attempt the country's deepest-ever 7,000-meter manned dive.

The aim of this dive is to test and verify the technical situations of updated submersible’s systems after the 5000-meter dive, in order to challenge the deeper ocean.

Three sea divers CUI Weicheng, YE Cong and YANG Bo (L to R) pose for a photo aboard Xiangyanghong 09, mother ship of China's manned deep-sea submersible, Jiaolong, June 15, 2012.