Those "shots" that sonar picked up in the North Atlantic in the area where the submarine with 5 people on board disappeared two days ago could represent a glimmer of hope. The Titan had dived towards the wreck of the Titanic, at a depth of 3,800 meters off the coast of Canada. Then he disappeared.
Rescuers are using sonar: a Canadian P-8 aircraft involved in the search “heard shots in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later, further sonar was deployed and the banging was still being heard,” an internal email sent to US Department of Homeland Security officials read. Sonar also picked up bangs according to an internal US government memo, but the document doesn't clarify when the bangs were heard, for how long, and what might have caused them.
The presence of "underwater noises" was also confirmed by the Coast Guard.
The crew of the Titan can count on a maximum of 96 hours of oxygen from the start of the mission , 41 hours from 1pm on Tuesday, provided that the integrity of the hull has not been damaged by the enormous underwater pressure or an accident.
For the research activities, remote-controlled vehicles are being used which make it possible to search for and recover objects in the depths of up to 6,000 meters while a Canadian P-3 plane has dropped sound buoys in the area where the Titanic sank which can record any sounds emitted by the submarine up to 3,962 meters deep.
The Polar Prince, the vessel assisting the mission, lost contact with the Titan about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, when it should have been more than halfway through. On board the expedition, which costs $250,000 each, were 58-year-old British millionaire Hamish Harding (who last year flew into space aboard the fifth commercial flight of Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos' space company), businessman Pakistani living in London Shahzada Dawood with his son Suleman, the 77-year-old French explorer and submarine pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate, the company that owns the Titan.
(Unioneonline/ss)
