Korea has launched an unmanned underwater vehicle to search for minerals in deep-sea mining areas.

The Maritime Ministry said Friday that the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute’s 14-hundred-ton Onnuri underwater vehicle set out from Geoje Island, South Gyeongsang Province to seek out deep-sea minerals under waters two-thousand kilometers southeast of Hawaii.

The agency’s 36-member exploration team will probe a 75-thousand square-kilometer zone to search for manganese nodules. The 75-day mission will end September first.