It was originally ordered by Steve Fossett for an attempt on the Challenger Deep, to become the first solo dive there.
[3][5] The project was put on hold when Fossett died, and locked up in a warehouse at Hawkes Ocean Technologies, by the then owners, Fossett's estate,[2] but was later revived when Chris Welsh of Deep Sub LLC bought the unfinished sub and restarted the program in 2010.
[6][7][8] At the time of Fossett's death, the sub had been almost finished,[2][9] only four weeks from dive tests[10] and delivery.
[13] The submersible uses composite technology to create a lightweight sub with great depth capabilities.
The view dome is made from quartz, while the rest of the pressure hull uses carbon/epoxy composites.
[16] The design drew from DeepFlight II, another Hawkes Ocean Technologies full depth submersible.
[18] There has been an undeclared race on to return to the Challenger Deep between four teams, Cameron's, Virgin Oceanic's, Google-Schmidt/DOER's, and Triton submersibles'.
[19] Based on testing at high pressure, the DeepFlight Challenger was determined to be suitable only for a single dive, not the repeated uses that had been planned as part of Virgin Oceanic service.