Authorities have said the Titanic-tourist submersible that went missing on Sunday experienced a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people on board as it descended to examine the famous ship’s wreckage.
The “Titan” submersible, which started the two-and-a-half-hour journey early on Sunday, lost contact with its mother ship, the Polar Prince, an hour and a half into the trip.
Approximately 1,600 feet from the Titanic’s bow, which is located approximately 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, a remotely operated vehicle discovered the tail cone and other pieces of the missing submersible, according to a report released on Thursday by the US Coast Guard.
The five men on board were mourned by the submersible’s operator, OceanGate Expeditions, in a statement released on Thursday.
The men included the company’s CEO and founder Stockton Rush, British entrepreneur Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman Dawood.
Only five adults could fit in the Titan, which was about the size of a minivan. Life inside a submersible can change from being hot to being cold during a typical journey thousands of feet towards the bottom of the North Atlantic ocean.
A submersible, unlike a submarine, has limited power reserves and needs a support ship on the surface to launch and recover it. In contrast to submarines, which can spend months submerged, Titan typically spent 10 to 11 hours on each trip to the Titanic wreck.
Remotely operated vehicles will be used to map the vessel’s debris field, which is more than 2 miles deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, as authorities try to determine the accident’s timeline and circumstances, according to US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger .
According to Mauger, authorities have not yet made a firm determination about whether the devastating implosion happened at the precise moment the submersible stopped communicating, which happened about one hour and forty-five minutes into the dive.
An anomaly “consistent with an implosion or explosion” was found on Sunday in the general area where the Titan was diving when it went silent, a senior Navy official told reporters after a Navy review of acoustics data.
Source-CNN
