The Titan, of OceanGate Expeditions, disappeared on Sunday after diving for an exploration on the wreck of the Titanic: it has only 96 hours of oxygen autonomy. Five people on board. Contact was lost approximately one hour and 45 minutes into the dive. US and Canadian search teams in action. French reinforcements will also be added to them from tomorrow
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US and Canadian search teams are using “all available resources” to search for the five-man mini-submarine that disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean. The Titan, of OceanGate Expeditions, of which nothing has been known since Sunday, had dived for an exploration on the wreck of the Titanic. The boat has only 96 hours of oxygen autonomy and therefore the race against time has started. Contact was lost approximately one hour and 45 minutes into the dive. “It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area,” said a Coast Guard commander, “but we are deploying all available resources to make sure we can locate the vessel and rescue those on board.” Around 8 pm tomorrow, June 21, France will also join the search for the submarine. The French oceanographic institute Ifremer has in fact diverted its ship Atalante, equipped with a submarine robot, towards the research area, announced the French secretary of state in charge of the sea. The ship should arrive tomorrow around 20 (Italian time) in the area where Toulon operators will immerse the robot. Among the five people on board is also the Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a former Navy officer and currently director of the submarine research program of the ocean liner that sank in 1912.
Relief: “Race Against Time”
It was the Boston Coast Guard who spread the alarm, engaged in the coordination of searches that with the running of the hands are becoming more and more frantic: also due to the vastness of the stretch of a quadrant of sea very remote from the coasts. And Admiral John Mauger, quoted by Bbc, now speaks openly of “race against time”. Initially it was not clear if and how many individuals had embarked on the private mini-submarine. But then the nautical authorities of Massachusetts confirmed that five guests came aboard, including the former British pilot Hamish Harding, explorer and owner of the small company Action Aviation based in the Emirates, already known as a space tourist and pilot in the 2022 of the fifth flight of Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin shuttle. Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate Expeditions, was also on board, according to the website of the Bbc.
deepening
Titanic, how ship visit expeditions work
The experience on the Titan
The Titan, capable of descending to a good 4,000 meters below sea level, has in fact a maximum capacity designed precisely for 5 passengers. Visitors willing to pay a very expensive ticket to let themselves be lowered into the abyss and see with their own eyes the seabed on which the remains of what was once the most famous vessel in the world lie at a depth of about 3,800 metres: remains identified in 1985 after decades of exploration. The adventure, managed by the OceanGate Expeditions company, involves an eight-day mission, at a cost of $250,000 per person.
There are more than 700,000 images collected by Atlantic Production and Magellan that show extraordinary shots of the Titanic, the legendary ocean liner resting on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for more than 100 years
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The wreck is broken into two parts almost a kilometer away, so to totally rebuild the ship they used two remotely controlled submarines for a total duration of 200 hours of filming
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Speaking to the BBC, Gerhard Seiffert of Magellan, or the company specializing in deep-sea filming that oversaw the project, explained: “The wreck is 4,000 meters deep, and we are not allowed to touch it so as not to damage it. For these reasons it was the largest underwater scanning project we have ever undertaken”
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