The submarine that disappeared during a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic had been lost for about two and a half hours during a similar trip last year.
OceanGate Expeditions’ five-person Titan submarine was featured on a CBS Sunday Morning segment late last year with correspondent David Pogue following a voyage to the wreck site some 595 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
+ First 3D scan of the ‘Titanic’ reveals more details of the sinking
Reacting to the news that Titan and its crew had gone missing on Monday morning, Pogue tweeted that he was aboard the same submarine when he was filming his story last summer.
“You may recall that the @OceanGateExped sub for the #Titanic was also lost for a few hours last summer when I was on board,” Pogue said.
During the segment, Pogue narrated that the sub had lost communication with the vessel guiding its movement underwater, ruining the trip that some tourists paid $250,000 to participate in.
“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface ship must guide the sub to the wreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in the story. “But on this dive, communications were somehow disrupted. The submarine never found the wreckage.
Despite the scare of the past, the company was later able to launch a successful dive, with the crew observing the site of the world’s most infamous wreck.
Monday’s disappearance occurred about an hour and 45 minutes after Titan’s dive, the US Coast Guard said in a tweet. The research ship Polar Prince had lost contact with Titan at that time.
OceanGate says that while the entire trip to the wreck site takes eight days, the dive itself can take up to 10 hours.
The company noted that due to their mid-Atlantic location, they rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for their communications at sea.
World-renowned explorer Hamish Harding was confirmed to be among those aboard the submarine when it disappeared, with the 58-year-old British millionaire bragging about the opportunity to see the Titanic in the days leading up to the voyage.
“We started sailing from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and we are planning to start diving operations around 4am tomorrow morning. Until then, we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do,” Harding wrote on Instagram alongside a photo of her signing a banner celebrating the expedition.
Harding also said that among those joining him on the mission was veteran French Navy diver PH Nargeolet, who had led previous expeditions to the Titanic. It remains unclear whether Nargeolet is among those missing.
OceanGate posted on Twitter last week that only one Titanic expedition was underway due to the weather in Newfoundland, with two more planned for June 2024.
Harding’s post before his disappearance echoed that the submarine had a small window of opportunity to visit the Titanic amidst bad weather.
what we know
A submarine on an expensive tourist expedition to the sinking of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean has disappeared with probably only four days of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small sub began its underwater journey with five passengers on Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes after the launch. start of the dive.
Who’s on board?
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among five traveling on the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who already paid for a space trip aboard The Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest trip to the wreck.
What is the next?
“We are doing everything we can to locate the submersible and rescue the people on board,” Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of hours, we understand that that was 96 hours of operator emergency capacity, and so we anticipate that there will be somewhere between a full 70 and 96 hours available at this point.”
Mauger, commander of the first district and leader of the search and rescue mission, said the US was coordinating the operation with Canada.
What is it?
Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, the submarine, known as the Titan submersive, has capacity for just five people. Since 2019, the company has offered tourists the opportunity to explore the wreck of the Titanic just over 3 kilometers below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Canada – for $250,000 per ticket. Titan usually operates with a chief pilot, three crew, and then tourists who pay for the daring adventure.
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