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| Sub diving into ocean |
A tourist submersible called Titan, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing with five people aboard while exploring the century-old wreck of the Titanic. Multinational search team has been searching for the sub for five days now. The submarine began its descent on Sunday and lost contact with its surface support vessel near the end of what was supposed to be a two-hour dive at the site of the world's most famous shipwreck in a remote corner of the "North Atlantic".
The Oxygen Supply
The Titan left with 96 hours of air, the company said, meaning its oxygen tanks would likely be depleted by Thursday morning. According to experts, the life of the air depends on various factors, such as the power of the submersible and the calmness of the people on board. Yet the countdown to oxygen depletion posed only a hypothetical timeline, assuming the missing ship was still intact, rather than trapped or damaged in punitive depths at or near the seabed.
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| Titanic sub dives into ocean |
The U.S. Coast Guard reports on Wednesday that Canadian search planes had recorded undersea noises using sonar buoys earlier that day and on Tuesday. The Coast Guard said deployments of remotely operated underwater search vehicles were redirected to the vicinity where the noises were detected, to no avail, and officials warned the sounds may not have come from the Titan. In a much-anticipated addition to the research, the French research vessel Atalante was en route late Wednesday to deploy a robotic diving craft capable of descending to a depth far below that of even the Titanic ruins at more than 2 miles deep, the Coast Guard said. . The French submersible robot, dubbed the Victor 6000, was sent at the request of the US Navy, which sent its own special rescue system designed to lift large, heavy underwater objects such as sunken planes or small ships.
The Titan was carrying its pilot and four others on a deep-sea excursion to the sinking, capping a sightseeing adventure for which OceanGate charges $250,000 per person. According to a confirmed report, the passengers included British billionaire and adventurer Hamish Harding, 58, and Pakistani-born business tycoon Shahzada Dawood, 48, with his 19-year-old son Suleman, both British citizens. French oceanographer and top Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and Stockton Rush, founder and chief executive of OceanGate, were also reportedly on board the missing sub.
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| Those on board the missing Titanic Submarine |