Challenger expedition

Challenger expedition

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Challenger expedition

The Challenger Expedition was a scientific expedition that made many discoveries to lay the foundation of oceanography.

Prompted by the Scot, Charles Wyville Thomson - of the University of Edinburgh and Merchiston Castle School - the Royal Society of London obtained the use of a ship, HMS Challenger, from the Royal Navy and, between 1870 and 1872, modified it for scientific work, equipping it with separate laboratories for natural history and chemistry.

The ship, commanded by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England, on December 21, 1872. Under the scientific supervision of Thomson himself it traveled nearly 70,000 miles surveying and exploring. The result was the Report Of The Scientific Results of the Exploring Voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the years 1873-76 which, among many other discoveries, catalogued 4,000 previously unknown species of animal. John Murray, who supervised the publication, described the report as "the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries".

The Challenger Expedition also led to the discovery of new information for oceanography at the time. Some of the findings of the trek are 127500 km covered during the expedition, 492 deep sea soundings, 133 bottom dredges, 151 open water trawls, 263 serial water temperature observations, and about 4717 new species of marine life were discovered. Copies of the written records of the Challenger Expedition are now stored in several marine institutions around the UK including the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton and the Dove Marine Laboratory in Cullercoats, Tyne and Wear.

The Space Shuttle Challenger was named after HMS Challengerhttp://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/resources/orbiters/Challenger.html.