The solar-powered unmanned semi-submersible vehicle, developed by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sailed through the eye of Typhoon Sinlaku on August 1st, 2020 and successfully collected urgently-needed data for typhoon research.

The MWO-3 of 2020 "Haiyan Observation Plan" at Qionghai, China. (Image by LI Jun)

This unmanned semi-submersible vehicle, called "Marine Weather observer-3 (MWO-3)", obtained the ocean and meteorology parameters with temporal resolution of 1 minute during the "Sinlaku" passing process. The MWO-3 plays a key role in providing data support for typhoon prediction, warning, and related research, when the traditional observations are unavailable and unreachable.

The unmanned semi-submersible vehicle developed by IAP is sailing on the ocean.(Image by LI Jun)

This is the first time that scientists have used a solar-powered unmanned semi-submersible to carry out observations in the eye of a typhoon.