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Gallery: The submarine pioneer who shaped spaceflight

By Tom Simonite

6 November 2008

Explore a gallery of photos from Piccard’s most historic excursions beneath the waves.

Swiss deep-sea explorer and engineer Jacques Piccard, who reached the deepest depths of the world’s oceans and pioneered the construction of deep-diving submersibles, died this weekend at the age of 86, in his Lake Geneva home.

Piccard’s legacy reaches from the depths of the ocean to the heights of space. His work on submersibles was funded by the US Navy, who used his designs to build later subs, while an epic month-long underwater research mission he undertook helped NASA learn how to keep people working in cramped space stations for long periods.

He was one of only two people to ever reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench, which, at more than 10 kilometres down, is the deepest point on earth.

Explore a gallery of photos from Piccard’s most historic excursions beneath the waves.

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