Former NASA astronaut and geologist Kathy Sullivan has become the first woman to dive to lowest point on Earth, known as Challenger Deep, inside the Mariana Trench.

Sullivan, 68, emerged from the submersible DSV Limiting Factor (LF) on Sunday, which performed a successful expedition at more than 35,000 feet below the ocean’s surface. 

In 1984, Dr Sullivan, a veteran of three space shuttle flights, became the first American woman to walk in space.

She has now become the eighth person to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, following the first two, Don Walsh and Jacques Picard in 1960, as well as film director James Cameron in 2012.