PIFA, International – A tourist submarine exploring the wreck of the Titanic has been missing since Sunday (18/6) off the coast of Canada, in the Atlantic Ocean. The submarine was carrying five people, including two billionaires and the CEO of travel agency OceanGate.
The tour sub went missing after 1 hour and 45 minutes of diving off the southeast coast of Canada. Until this news was published, it was unclear why the ship could not be found.
Launching CNN, the submarine was part of an eight-day voyage organized by OceanGate Titanic Expeditions. To be able to explore this historic wreck, you have to pay up to 250,000 US dollars, or about 3.7 billion rupees.
The underwater tour centers on Newfoundland, where visitors first travel 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is approximately 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.
On Sunday, the ship began its dive into the sea towards the location of the Titanic. However, the boat lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support vessel that brought the submarine to the site, approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
The search operation began that day. So far it is unknown what happened to the submarine so that it cannot be found and it is also unknown how close the submarine was to the Titanic at the time.
According to OceanGate, the submarine is called Titan, weighs 23,000 pounds and is made of carbon fiber and titanium. The vessel is equipped with state-of-the-art safety features, including a real-time Hull Condition Monitoring (RTM) system capable of analyzing the vessel’s stresses and structural integrity.
With this system, any problem with the vessel will trigger an early warning to the pilot, giving him plenty of time to return to the surface safely.
However, Harry B. Harris Jr., former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, said the fact that the submarine had not surfaced independently so far indicated a problem.
The search would have been complicated if the submarine had not emitted any sound or signal. On Tuesday (20/6), the submarine search team claimed to have heard booms every 30 minutes in the search area.
However, the US Coast Guard said it found nothing after Canadian planes detected underwater noise during a search operation.
They keep scouring the search area for tourists, but so far they haven’t gotten any positive results.
Quoting the Washington Post, Chiporukha explained that this tour is for people who have accomplished feats such as climbing the world’s seven highest peaks and crossing the Atlantic on their own boat.
Currently, US Coast Guard officials estimate the submarine has only about 40 hours of oxygen left. (yd)
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