Samudrayaan project

The Union Budget allocated ₹600 crore to the Deep Ocean Mission, which includes the Samudrayaan project.

• The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences, is leading the project.
• It is India’s first manned ocean mission for deep-sea exploration and mining of rare minerals like polymetallic manganese nodules, gas hydrates, hydrothermal sulfides, and cobalt crusts.
• India has been allocated a site of 75,000sq km in the Central Indian Ocean Basin by the International Sea Bed Authority (ISA) for the exploration of polymetallic nodules from the seabed in a 15-year contract.
• Matsya 6000 is the indigenously developed manned submersible under the mission, designed to carry three persons to a depth of 6,000 meters.
• It is an indigenously developed by ISRO in collaboration with NIOT.