The Incredible Woman Who Walked in Space and the First Woman to Reach the Mariana Trench

A former NASA astronaut who was the first American woman to walk in space has become the world's first woman to reach the deepest point on Earth.

36 years after my space walk, I became the first woman to dive to the deepest known spot in the ocean - the Challenger Deep. #WorldOceansDay pic.twitter.com/KWJxx4fBYR

— Kathy Sullivan (@AstroKDS) June 9, 2020

Kathy Sullivan on Saturday (June 6) dove to Challenger Deep, the lowest-known location on the planet. She is now the first woman and eighth person to descend the 7 miles (11 kilometers) to the bottom of the crescent-shaped Mariana Trench, located near Guam in the Western Pacific Ocean.

"Challenger Deep — and back!" wrote Sullivan on Facebook after completing the history-making dive. "10,915 m[eters] on our gauges (35,810 ft)."

5 facts about this week's Challenger Deep dive with @CaladanOceanic and @EYOSExpeditions
1. It takes about 4-5 hours to descend and ascend
2. Depth of 10,925 m (+/- 6 miles)
3. No fish!
4. 22 degrees F inside the sub (-5 C)
5. Pressure at the bottom reaches 16,000 PSI pic.twitter.com/DWY6uTyMYV

— Kathy Sullivan (@AstroKDS) June 10, 2020

Sullivan's participation in Caladan Oceanic's "Ring of Fire" expedition comes 36 years after she launched on and performed a spacewalk outside of the space shuttle Challenger in 1984. Both the orbiter and seafloor depression were named after the HMS Challenger, the British Royal Navy survey ship that in 1875 was the first to record the depth of what would later be known as Challenger Deep.

Sullivan's craft on Saturday (Sunday, June 7 in Guam) was the "Limiting Factor," the first commercially-certified full-ocean-depth DSV (deep submergence vehicle...