Abstract: Polar expedition had supplied abundant database for ecology and climatology research, while marine sediment sample is one of the main subject over the Antarctic and Arctic scientific expeditions. Internationally, box-core, grab, and multi-core samplers are widely used to collect pelagic sediments.  However, it should be noted that there is a large gap in the long core sediment sampling equipment around the domestic and foreign countries. The previous Chinese ice-breaker R/V Xuelong does not have the capability to carry a long piston corer and instead has been using a rather short (< 8 m) gravity sampler to collect core sediment. The length of the collected cores is limited to about 4 to 6 m because of the lower recovery rates of gravity corers. On July 11, 2019, R/V Xuelong 2 was officially delivered to the Ministry of Natural Resources and joined the polar expedition sequence of China, which was equipped with a 22-m-long giant piston corer, and start her virgin Antarctic and Arctic voyages later. Two high-quality sediment cores over 18 m long were recovered and sediment recovery was more than 80%. This instrument greatly increases our ability to collect long high-quality sediment cores during polar scientific expeditions.

Key words: R/V Xuelong 2, icebreaker, sediments, giant piston corer, polar