Former NASA astronaut who made history as the first American female spacewalker breaks new ground by diving 36,000ft under water to the lowest point on Earth

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, the Daily Mail reports.

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.