ocean gate tour of submarine

Patents, lawsuits, safety concerns — then tragedy. A timeline of OceanGate's Titan sub.

A mission to explore the remains of the Titanic went horribly awry on June 18, riveting the world as search crews raced against time to find a submersible that vanished during an attempted dive to the ocean floor, where paying passengers and Stockton Rush III, founder of the submersible company OceanGate, could view the Titanic wreckage.

On Thursday the U.S. Coast Guard announced pieces of the submersible were found scattered across a debris field a third of a mile from the Titanic . OceanGate issued a statement saying, "We grieve the loss of life" of those aboard.

Also aboard the vessel were French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, British explorer and jet dealer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood of a prominent Pakistani family and his son Suleman.

Records show the tragedy was preceded by a long path toward developing a craft that would reach the ocean depths where the Titanic rests. They also show a history of safety concerns .

Retrace the development of OceanGate, a Bahamian-registered corporation, and its submersibles, and the search for the missing Titan, with this timeline.

2009: OceanGate is founded

A provider of manned deep-sea submersibles, OceanGate starts operations on the West Coast, the company has stated in news releases. Its founder is Stockton Rush III, who graduated from Princeton University with a BSE in aerospace, aeronautical and astronautical engineering in 1984 and obtained an MBA at the University of California Berkeley's Haas School of Business in 1989, according to his biography on OceanGate’s website.

February 2012: OceanGate expands to Florida and the Caribbean

It's registered as a corporation in Miami, with Guillermo Sohnlein as president and Rush as secretary. Documents state the company incorporated in Washington State in Dec. 2011.

May 2013: Collaboration announced with University of Washington

OceanGate says it will collaborate with the school's Applied Physics Lab on Project Cyclops I, a new 3000-meter 5-person submersible. (The University clarified on June 23 that they only completed about $650,000 worth of work on a $5 million research collaborative agreement before parting ways. The collaboration resulted in a steel-hulled vessel that can only travel to a depth of 500 meters, the University stated.)

June 2013: Studies invasive fish

OceanGate teams up with Nova Southeastern University to study invasive lionfish in Florida.

August 2013: Submersible feasibility study concludes

OceanGate announces University of Washington completes design feasibility study for hull design for Cyclops I submersible.

June 2015: Report published on submersible

Rush and science and technology director Erika Montague, publish a report on Cyclops I with Peter Brodsky, an engineer at the University of Washington. 

November 2015: Some of the earliest paying customers sign up for trip

Marc and Sharon Hagle sign a contract and pay $10,000 deposits to OceanGate to participate in an expedition to the Titanic. 

June 2016: OceanGate submersible dives to wreck

One of the company's submersibles dives over the wreck of the Andrea Doria off Nantucket.

March 2017: OceanGate announces Titanic dive

Company announces it will conduct the first manned submersible dives to Titanic since 2005, and that private citizens may join the expedition as mission specialists for $105,129 each.

Mid-2017: Refund or not?

The Hagles begin pondering whether to ask OceanGate for a refund of their deposit. Rush visits their home to reassure them.

August 2017: One step completed

OceanGate completes assembly of core pressure vessel, bonding two titanium rings to the ends of a 56-inch wide, 100-inch-long carbon-fiber cylinder.

January 2018: Launch and recovery testing

OceanGate tweets it successfully tested the launch and recovery platform of Cyclops 2.

February 2018: Cyclops 2 becomes Titan

Engineering team hands over Cyclops 2 to operations team, renames submersible vessel.

The Hagles wire OceanGate an additional $190,258 to pay for their planned Titan expedition. 

March 2018: Safety concerns raised

A trade group, the Marine Technology Society, sends a letter to OceanGate — Reported by the New York Times in June 2023 — to express unanimous concern regarding development of the Titan submersible and its planned Titanic Expedition.

April 2018: Expedition canceled

Hagles say OceanGate cancels June 2-9, 2018 expedition and reschedules it to July 2019.

July 2018: Lawsuit emerges

OceanGate sues former director of marine operations David Lochridge and his wife, Carole Reid Lochridge in Washington state .

August 2018: Safety concerns

Lochridges file a counterclaim in the lawsuit, alleging a series of safety concerns about the Titan submersible .

November 2018: Case dismissed

Parties settle in the OceanGate v. Lochridge case.

December 2018: Another milestone

CBS This Morning publishes a story saying Rush reached a depth of 13,000 feet during a dive in the Titan in the Bahamas, a key milestone in his plan to dive to the Titanic in 2019.

April 2019: A new patent

U.S. Patent Office assigns OceanGate a patent for systems to recover objects in aquatic environments.

June 2019: Expedition delay

OceanGate delays 2019 Titanic expedition, says it will take place in June 2020.

October 2019: Expedition canceled

Hagles receive email saying OceanGate cancels 2020 expedition.

January 2020: Raising money

OceanGate announces it has raised $18 million in equity financing, which it will use to expand its fleet of deep-sea submersibles to set the stage for 2021 dives to the Titanic.

February 2020: NASA to partner

NASA announces it will partner with OceanGate to develop and manufacture new carbon fiber pressure vessels. (NASA told USA TODAY on June 23 that it "consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible." Lance Davis, acting news chief for the Marshall Space Flight Center, said the agency "did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which were done elsewhere by OceanGate.")

November 2020: Tourist dives to start

Dozens of international news stories say OceanGate will start its first tourist dives to the Titanic in 2021.

March 2021: Astronaut joins expedition

OceanGate and NASA astronaut and physician Dr. Scott Parazynski announce he will join the Titanic expedition. 

May 2021: OceanGate provides plans to federal overseer

The U.S. District Court oversees legal issues involving the Titanic under an open 1993 court case. In May 2021, David Concannon, a legal and operations consultant to OceanGate, sent a letter to the court outlining its expedition plans, saying it will be "the first of many" and will be conducted under NOAA guidelines.

"The exploration team will conduct annual surveys of the wreck in collaboration with scientific and imaging experts from multiple organizations as part of an on-going long-term study to document the current conditionof the Titanic maritime heritage site."

The letter assured the court the vessel would not move or retrieve any artifacts and would deposit any ballast "well clear of the wreck and debris field." It ended with an invitation to the judge to join the expedition as a guest of OceanGate.

June 2021: Another patent

U.S. patent issued to OceanGate for systems and methods for launching and recovering objects in aquatic environments.

July 2021: Titanic success

OceanGate completes its first submersible dive to the Titanic, with a team that includes Rush, Scott Griffith and PH Nargeolet, a former French Naval commander and submersible pilot. The company says a series of yearly expeditions will help record the Titanic’s rate of decay and map the artifacts found on the site.

September 2021: A patent for monitoring integrity

OceanGate receives patent for systems for curing, testing, validating, rating and monitoring the integrity of composite structures.

November 2021: Tickets for sale for next expedition

OceanGate announces 2022 expedition to Titanic , price to ride rises to $250,000. 

May 2022: OceanGate updates court on expedition plans

OceanGate sends a letter notifying the District Court that it plans five photographic and scientific survey "missions" to the wreck site of the Titanic during the summer of 2022 and includes a copy of its draft science plan.

"Every effort will be made to avoid contact with the wreck itself, and no artifacts or scientific samples will be collected from the wreck itself. However, this year the expedition does plan to take free floating water samples throughout the water column and on the bottom, as part of  OceanGate’s scientific efforts to collect environmental DNA in conjunction with its partners at the University of North Carolina and University of Edinburgh."

July 2022: Expedition encounters difficulties

CBS correspondent David Pogue goes on a Titanic expedition with OceanGate . On one dive, the submersible never finds the Titanic .

August 2022: Video shows submersible dive

OceanGate releases high definition video from its 2022 trip to the Titanic.

January 2023: A tally of dives so far

A Guardian story reports OceanGate Expeditions has taken about 60 customers and 15-20 researchers down to the Titanic in its submersible. 

February 2023: Couple alleges fraudulent inducement

The Hagles sue Rush in Orange County, Florida circuit court, alleging fraudulent inducement and violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

April 2023: OceanGate sends 2023 plan to court

Concannon sends a letter to the District Court saying the 2023 expedition will begin in early May and continue in 8-day segments through the end of June.

"Each dive will consist of the deployment of the 5-person submersible Titan, which has a 4,000m/13,120 ft. depth capability (with a comfortable safety margin). Constructed of titanium and filament wound carbon fiber, the innovative vessel has proven to be a safe and comfortable vessel proven to withstand the enormous pressures of the deep ocean," the letter states.

The participating scientists and archaeologists on previous dives "are compiling and analyzing theirfindings. The company and science team collaborated with eDNAtec, headquartered in St. John’s Newfoundland, to analyze environmental DNA found in water samples collected near the wreck and at a natural reef site nearby. This collaboration will continue in 2023. eDNAtec intends to make all gene sequences available through GenBank at the conclusion of their analysis."

May 26, 2023: Titanic expedition underway

Ocean Gate Expeditions tweets a photo of 24 people on deck, saying: "It's been an exciting week with our Mission 2 crew!"

June 1, 2023: In the 'middle of the North Atlantic'

OceanGate Expeditions tweets "Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection we need to make our #Titanic dive operations a success - thank you @Starlink!"

June 15, 2023: Missions underway

OceanGate tweets: "Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection we need to make our #Titanic dive operations a success - thank you @Starlink !"

June 17, 2023: Harding posts dive planned next day

Hamish Harding, chairman of Action Aviation, posts on Facebook that he has joined OceanGate Expeditions for the Titan mission and will be on an attempted dive on June 18.

June 18, 2023: Day ends in disaster

8:00 a.m. – Titan begins a descent from the Canadian research vessel the Polar Prince to the Titanic wreck, a trip expected to take two hours to reach the ocean floor, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

9:45 a.m. – Communications cease between the Titan and its mothership , about 90 minutes into the trip.

Unknown time – Navy acoustic equipment detects an "anomaly" in the vicinity of the site.

3:00 p.m. – Titan fails to appear at the expected time for resurfacing

5:40 p.m. – Coast Guard receives a report on an overdue 21-foot submersible, with five people on board, diving to view the wreckage of the Titanic , approximately 900 nautical miles East of Cape Cod.  

June 19, 2023: Search underway

Coast Guard says one of its C-130 Hercules aircraft and crew, as well as a Canadian P8 aircraft with underwater sonar capability, are searching for the submersible.

June 20, 2023: Hope flares

The Canadian aircraft reports hearing "underwater noises in the search area."

Coast Guard establishes a command to help coordinate multiple vessels conducting search operations, says 10,000 square miles have been searched, including a Bahamian research vessel using a remotely operated vehicle and another C-130 crew. Coast Guard reports eight vessels enroute, including five Canadian ships, a French research vessel, the motor vessel Horizon Arctic and the commercial vessel Skandi Vinland.

June 21, 2023: Search continues

Coast Guard reports a third C-130 enroute, as well as a Magellan ROV. The Navy is sending experts and a Deep Ocean Salvage System designed to lift underwater objects.

June 22, 2023: Debris field located

11:48 a.m. Coast Guard announces a debris field has been discovered by an ROV from the Horizon Arctic near the Titanic, likely the result of a catastrophic implosion.

OceanGate announces the crew of the Titan has been lost.

June 23, 2023: Lawsuit dropped

The Hagles, adventurers who became the first married couple on a commercial spaceflight last year , drop their lawsuit. They state: “Money is a driving force in our economy, but honor, respect and dignity are more important to the human soul."

June 24, 2023: Canada to investigate

Canada's Transportation Safety Board says it will investigate the Polar Prince , Titan's mothership, owned by Horizon Maritime. The company also owns the Horizon Arctic, the ship whose crew found the Titan wreckage.

June 25, 2023: Coast Guard to investigate

The Coast Guard says its Marine Board of Investigation will lead an investigation into the loss of the Titan. The MBI'S chairman, Capt. Jason Neubauer, says his primary goal is to "prevent a similar occurrence by making the necessary recommendations to advance the safety of the maritime domain worldwide."

June 28, 2023: Titan debris recovered

The Horizon Arctic vessel brings pieces of the Titan back to shore in St. John's, Newfoundland. After consulting with international partners, the Coast Guard intends to take the evidence to a U.S. port for further analysis and testing. A news release says medical professionals will conduct " a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage ."

July 2, 2023: OceanGate shutting down

OceanGate Expeditions updates its website to say it is ceasing operations .

Contributing: Grace Hauck

Missing sub: Mapping and visualizing debris found near titanic

What it was like inside the Titanic submersible: ‘As much room as a minivan’

Sunday’s trip by the submersible vessel in which all five passengers onboard died was one of a number of expeditions that OceanGate, the company operating the vessel, had sent to the Titanic wreck site with paying guests.

The trips to the wreckage took eight days, and passengers had little room to maneuver aboard the Titan . Here is what we know about the submersible’s past voyages to see the remains of the famous ship.

Eight days at sea — and a 2.4-mile descent

The expeditions to the Titanic wreckage cost $250,000 and were open to passengers age 17 and older, according to OceanGate. The Titan was 22 feet long and weighed 23,000 pounds, according to the company’s website .

Passengers set sail from St. John’s, on the eastern tip of Canada’s Newfoundland island, and traveled aboard a larger vessel for two days until they reached the site of the wreck. At that point, they entered the submersible in groups to go down to see the wreckage at a depth of 12,500 feet, or about 2.4 miles. Unlike a submarine, a submersible must be supported by a surface vessel, platform, shore team or sometimes a larger submarine.

Descents to the Titanic wreck depended on weather but could have begun as early as the third day of the expedition, OceanGate said.

“Once the submersible is launched you will begin to see alienlike life forms whizz by the viewport as you sink deeper and deeper into the ocean,” OceanGate said on its website before the Titan was lost. “The descent takes approximately two hours but it feels like the blink of an eye.”

According to the company’s itinerary, groups could spend hours exploring the wreckage and surrounding debris before beginning the two-hour return trip.

Bolted from the outside, steered by a video game controller

Footage from previous expeditions shared by the company shows the Titan’s tubelike interior, equipped with a large viewport to allow passengers to see the wreckage.

The video recording shows a toilet on the submersible that the company’s website said was separated from the rest of the capsule by a privacy curtain when in use. “We do recommend that you restrict your diet before and during the dive to reduce the likelihood that you will need to use the facilities,” it said.

According to CBS News correspondent David Pogue , who traveled on the Titan last year, the submersible had “about as much room as a minivan.” Passengers had to take their shoes off before entering, he said. Then the crew used 17 bolts to seal the hatch from the outside: “There’s no other way out.”

Who is Hamish Harding, tycoon and adventurer on the missing Titanic sub?

Pogue told the BBC after news of the Titan’s disappearance that many of the components on the submersible appeared to be makeshift or purchased off the shelf.

“For example, you steer this sub with a game controller, an Xbox game controller,” he said. “Some of the ballast is abandoned construction pipes that are sitting on shelves on the side of the thing, and the way you detach the ballast is you get everybody on board to lean to one side of the sub and they roll off.”

What to know about the missing submersible

Pogue recalled that chief executive and founder Stockton Rush reassured him that NASA and the University of Washington were involved in the capsule’s design, adding: “It’s rock solid.”

It’s not clear whether the same controller and ballast were used in Sunday’s expedition. However, OceanGate has said that off-the-shelf components “helped to streamline the construction, and makes it simple to operate and replace parts in the field.”

The submersible was equipped with a 96-hour supply of oxygen when it descended, said David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate, according to the Associated Press .

Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday that the vessel suffered a catastrophic loss of pressure that imploded it, killing everyone inside.

What would have happened in an emergency?

Pogue said that during one attempted descent to the wreck last year, communication between the larger surface ship and the submersible briefly broke down, meaning his group could not locate the wreck, he said. “We were lost for 2½ hours.”

OceanGate said earlier this month that it was relying on technology from Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, to ensure communications during this year’s expedition.

According to OceanGate’s website, the submersible was fitted with a health monitoring system, which enabled the pilot to analyze the effects of changing pressure and assess the vessel’s structural integrity.

‘Astonishing’ 3D scans reveal Titanic shipwreck in extraordinary new detail

Missing Titanic submersible

The latest: After an extensive search, the Coast Guard found debris fields that have been indentified as the Titan submersible. OceanGate, the tour company, has said all 5 passengers are believed dead.

The Titan: The voyage to see the Titanic wreckage is eight days long, costs $250,000 and is open to passengers age 17 and older. The Titan is 22 feet long, weighs 23,000 pounds and “has about as much room as a minivan,” according to CBS correspondent David Pogue. Here’s what we know about the missing submersible .

The search: The daunting mission covers the ocean’s surface and the vast depths beneath. The search poses unique challenges that are further complicated by the depths involved. This map shows the scale of the search near the Titanic wreckage .

The passengers: Hamish Harding , an aviation businessman, aircraft pilot and seasoned adventurer, posted on Instagram that he was joining the expedition and said retired French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet was also onboard. British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son, Suleman, 19, were also on the expedition, their family confirmed. The CEO of OceanGate , the submersible expedition company, was also on the vessel. Here’s what we know about the five missing passengers.

Watch CBS News

What we know about the tourist sub that disappeared on an expedition to the Titanic

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: June 23, 2023 / 11:35 PM EDT / CBS News

Five people on board the tourist  submarine that disappeared  on an expedition to explore the  Titanic shipwreck  over the weekend did not survive a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," officials said Thursday.

The announcement came after the U.S. Coast Guard said the  massive search  underway in the North Atlantic had located a debris field on the sea floor, which was confirmed to be pieces of the missing sub .

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a briefing, offering "deepest condolences to the families." A spokesperson for OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the voyage, told reporters that the passengers, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, "have sadly been lost."

Here's what we know so far about the submersible craft and what led up to this point.

What happened?

A five-person crew on a submersible named Titan, owned by OceanGate Expeditions, submerged on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince research ship lost contact with the sub about an hour and 45 minutes later, the Coast Guard   said . 

The Coast Guard first alerted mariners about the missing sub Sunday night, saying a "21 foot submarine" with a white hull was overdue and giving its last known position. "VESSELS IN VICINITY REQUESTED TO KEEP A SHARP LOOKOUT, ASSIST IF POSSIBLE," the alert message read.

The sub was lost in an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in the North Atlantic, in water with a depth of about 13,000 feet, which is about level with the depth of the Titanic wreck . Amid growing concern about its  dwindling supply of breathable air , search and rescue efforts by a unified command composed of several international agencies ramped up accordingly.

The five people aboard included an operator — later identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions — and four mission specialists, a term the company uses for its passengers, who paid up to $250,000 for a seat.

For days, the fate of the sub and its passengers was a mystery.

But after the debris was found, a U.S. Navy official said the Navy had detected "an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion" shortly after the sub lost contact with the surface Sunday, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported. The information was relayed to the Coast Guard, which used it to narrow the radius of the search area, the official said.

Such an implosion, under the intense pressure of the depths of the sea , would have destroyed the vessel almost instantly, experts explained.

"in a fraction of a second, it's gone," Will Kohnen, chairman of the professional group the Marine Technology Society Submarine Committee, told the Reuters news agency. 

"It implodes inwards in a matter of a thousandth of a second," Kohnen said. "And it's probably a mercy, because that was probably a kinder end than the unbelievably difficult situation of being four days in a cold, dark and confined space. So, this would have happened very quickly. I don't think anybody even had the time to realize what happened." 

The Coast Guard is leading the investigation into the incident, and the National Transportation Safety Board  said Friday  it will assist.   

Who were the passengers aboard the sub? 

CBS News confirmed that the five people aboard the submersible were  Hamish Harding , a 59-year-old British billionaire, business owner and explorer; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who had made multiple dives over the years to explore the Titanic; and Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, who was serving as pilot.

Just ahead of the Coast Guard briefing Thursday afternoon, a statement issued by OceanGate spokesperson Andrew Von Kerens offered condolences to the families of the Titan crew and recognized that all five people on board the submersible were believed to be dead.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," the company said in the statement. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."

When the Coast Guard confirmed the sub's likely implosion on Thursday, Mauger said they were communicating with consulates general in both the U.K. and France.

The Dawood family, of the large Pakistan-based global business conglomerate Dawood Group, issued a statement Tuesday confirming their family members were on the expedition.

"Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult time of mourning," the Hussain and Kulsum Dawood family said Thursday in a statement through the Dawood Foundation. "We are truly grateful to all those involved in the rescue operations. ... The immense love and support we receive continues to help us endure this unimaginable loss."

Nargeolet, a renowned French explorer and former diver for the French Navy who was part of the first expedition to visit the Titanic wreck in 1987, was returning for another dive aboard the Titan submersible. 

In a  Facebook  post on Monday, Rory Golden, an explorer who became the first Irish diver to visit the Titanic wreckage in 2000, said he was part of the voyage but was not on the submersible that went missing.

Search and rescue efforts

Authorities  said  early Thursday morning that a Canadian vessel, Horizon Arctic, had deployed a  remotely operated underwater vehicle that reached the sea floor . The ROV ultimately located what the Coast Guard originally described as a debris field on the sea floor, which included identifiable pieces of the sub, authorities confirmed that afternoon.

"This morning, an ROV, or remote operated vehicle, from the vessel Horizon Arctic, discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," said Mauger at a news briefing. "The ROV subsequently found additional debris. In consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

"Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families," he added. "On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time."

Mauger said authorities were "still working to develop the details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response," and referenced the "incredibly complex operating environment along the sea floor, over two miles beneath the surface."

Paul Hankins, an undersea expert for the U.S. Navy, explained during the news conference that crews discovered "five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan." These pieces included, initially, the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. 

"We then found a large debris field," Hankins said. "Within that large debris field, we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was our first indication that there was a catastrophic event."

A second, smaller debris field was located shortly after, and the debris found there "comprised the totality of that pressure vessel," Hankins said. 

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," he said, adding that the team will continue to map the debris field area.

Asked by a reporter what the prospects were for recovering the passengers, Mauger said, "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor, and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel. So we'll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time."

Discovering the Titan debris came after multiple agencies from the U.S. and Canada spent days scouring thousands of square miles of open ocean in search of the missing sub.

The U.S. Coast Guard announced Wednesday that  underwater noises were detected  in the search area and that searches involving ROVs were  focusing on the area where the noises were heard .

On Wednesday, three more vessels had arrived to join the search, including one with side-scan sonar capabilities designed to create images of large sections of the sea floor, the Coast Guard said in a  tweet . That vessel began conducting search patterns alongside at least two others, as multiple military and other agencies worked together under a unified command. 

Frederick said Wednesday there were five "surface assets" involved in the search , and another five were expected to join the operation within the next 24 to 48 hours. He said the team also had two ROVs "actively searching," with several more due to arrive to join the search Thursday.

The Coast Guard  said  it had C-130 aircraft searching for the sub, and that the Rescue Coordination Center Halifax was assisting with a P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which has underwater detection capabilities. Canadian P-3s were also involved in the operation and deployed sonar buoys.

Just after midnight Wednesday, officials said  aircraft had detected underwater noises  in the search area, and underwater search operations were relocated as a result, though the origin of the noises remained unknown. The sounds were picked up several times Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to the Coast Guard. 

"With respect to the noises, specifically, we don't know what they are, to be frank with you," Frederick said. "The P-3 detected noises, that's why they're up there, that's why they're doing what they're doing, that's why there are sonar buoys in the water."

News of the vanished submersible and subsequent rescue mission originally broke Monday morning. At the time, Lt. Jordan Hart of the Coast Guard in Boston told CBS News that personnel there were leading the rescue mission, and focusing on waters off Newfoundland in eastern Canada. 

The Boston Regional Coordination Center was managing the rescue operation, as the location of the Titanic shipwreck falls within the Boston coordination center's territory, according to a  map  of jurisdictions along the East Coast of North America.

That combined search area grew to about twice the size of the state of Connecticut, and the subsurface search extended down as far as 2 and a half miles deep, Frederick said, stressing that the search and rescue teams were dealing with an incredibly complex set of circumstances.

"We also have to factor in the ever-changing weather conditions, currents and sea states that expand the search area every hour," he said earlier in the week. "There's an enormous complexity associated with this case due to the location being so far offshore and the coordination between multiple agencies and nations. We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support and offers to provide additional equipment."

What caused the noises?

Frederick acknowledged that the sounds detected underwater by Canadian aircraft could have been caused by multiple sources. 

Following the discovery of the sub debris on the sea floor, a U.S. Navy source told CBS News that the implosion would be inconsistent with banging noises heard at 30-minute intervals. Those noises, the official said, are now assessed as having come from other ships in the area.

Carl Hartsfield, an expert in underwater acoustics and the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is on-site at the search area as a consultant, explained that it can be challenging to differentiate between "human sounds" and "nature sounds" coming from beneath the surface.

"The ocean is a very complex place, obviously, human sounds, nature sounds, and it's very difficult to discern what the sources of those noises are at times," Hartsfield said. 

Before the sub was found, Chris Roman, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told CBS News that, technically, it was possible that sounds from inside a submersible could have been detected, but that wasn't the only potential source of the noise.

"Sound travels very efficiently underwater. If people were intentionally making noises within the sub, it's very likely they could be detected with a sound buoy, and that position can be translated into a new search area," Roman said. But he also noted that, as Frederick mentioned in his briefing, "there's a lot of other things in the ocean that make noises."

The submarine

The unique submersible craft that disappeared was owned by OceanGate Expeditions , a company that deploys manned submarines for deep sea exploration and has in the past advertised this particular sub's voyages to carry tourists down to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic for $250,000 per seat. 

More than a century after the Titanic sank in April 1912, the wreck lies on the ocean floor about 400 miles southeast of the Newfoundland coast. 

OceanGate said recently on its website and on social media that its expedition to the shipwreck was "underway," describing the seven-night trip as a "chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary." In addition to one ongoing expedition, the company had planned two others for the summer of next year, according to the site. 

Because of the sub's oxygen capacity, it can only be fully submerged for a portion of the weeklong voyage. The sub has emergency oxygen and a 96-hour sustainment capability if there's an emergency aboard, Mauger said.

In a statement Monday after news broke of the missing sub, OceanGate confirmed the missing submersible was theirs and that a rescue operation had been launched to find and recover it. The company said it was "exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely." 

"For some time, we have been unable to establish communications with one of our submersible exploration vehicles which is currently visiting the wreck site of the Titanic," said Andrew Von Kerens, a spokesperson for OceanGate. "We pray for the safe return of the crew and passengers, and we will provide updates as they are available."

Inside the Titan

Dubbed the Titan, OceanGate's deep sea vessel, was said to be the only five-person submersible in the world with the capabilities to reach the Titanic's depth, nearly 2 and a half miles beneath the ocean's surface, CBS "Sunday Mornings" correspondent David Pogue reported last year. 

BBC News reported that the vessel typically carries a pilot, three paying guests and another person described as a "content expert" by the company.  OceanGate's site says the Titan, weighing around 23,000 pounds, has the ability to reach depths of up to 4,000 meters — over 13,000 feet — and has about 96 hours of life support for a crew of five people.

Last summer, Pogue accompanied the Titan crew on the journey from Newfoundland to the site where the Titanic as lost. Several dive attempts had to be canceled when weather conditions indicated it may not be safe. At the time, he described the Titan as a one-of-a-kind submersible craft made from thick carbon fiber and coated on both ends by a dome of titanium. 

In 2018, a former employee of OceanGate Expeditions, submersible pilot David Lochridge, voiced concerns about the safety of the Titanic tour sub and filed a lawsuit against the company . 

Lochridge, who was fired by OceanGate and sued by the company for allegedly disclosing confidential information in a whistleblower complaint to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in a court filing that the Titan would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters even though that depth had never been reached in a sub with its type of carbon fiber hull. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.  

Lochridge was not the only skeptic. The same year his complaint was filed, other industry leaders approached OceanGate with questions about the safety of its submersible. William Kohnen, president and CEO of Hydrospace Group, outlined his concerns in a 2018 letter to OceanGate, originally published by The New York Times, that warned of potentially "catastrophic" issues with the "experimental" sub, which was not certified. Kohnen told CBS News on Wednesday that although he did not send it, the letter was leaked to OceanGate and prompted the company to "amend a number of details that made sure the public knew" the submersible had not received its certification.

"The letter to Oceangate was meant as a professional courtesy to the CEO expressing industry concerns that the company was not following a traditional classification route for the certification of the submersible," Kohnen said. "The industry operates along an established and dynamic set of safety regulations and protocols that have served the submersible industry worldwide."

Ahead of his planned dive last summer, Pogue recalled signing paperwork that read, in part, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death." 

Space inside the submarine was similar to the interior of a minivan, and, with just one button and a video game controller used to steer it, the vessel "seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components," Pogue said.

On his voyage, the  sub was lost for a few hours , Pogue said.

"There's no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages," he reported at the time. "But on this dive, communications somehow broke down."

You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard…Here’s the relevant part of that story. https://t.co/7FhcMs0oeH pic.twitter.com/ClaNg5nzj8 — David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

Were conditions right for the dive?

G. Michael Harris, founder of RMS Titanic, Inc. — a company that salvages artifacts from the Titanic wreckage — told CBS News on Tuesday evening that Titanic expeditions are generally conducted within a "three-month weather window" between the end of June and September, when the ocean waters are at their calmest.

Harris, who has led several expeditions to the wreckage site, questioned why the Titan's dive was conducted as early as Sunday.

"Right now, it's really early in the season. I'm not sure why OceanGate went out this soon," Harris said.

Harris also noted that when he conducts diving expeditions, he uses a transponder system, something that he believed the Titan likely did not have.

"It's a net that we navigate in so that we know where we are at all times on the wreck of the Titanic," Harris said. "We're in constant communication with the vessel up top."

Harris said the Titan was "put on a sled and dumped in the water and their only navigation is from the support ship up top."

"I don't adhere to that myself, personally," Harris said. 

Harris noted that he has worked with Nargeolet, who is listed as director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, for the past 30 years, describing him as an "all-around good guy."

Who was Hamish Harding?

Harding, the first of the passengers to be publicly identified, had previously posted on social media about joining the Titanic shipwreck expedition.

In a post shared to his  Facebook  page on Saturday, Harding wrote: "I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic."

I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist... Posted by Hamish Harding on  Saturday, June 17, 2023

"Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023," Harding's Facebook post continued. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do."

That post was Harding's most recent social media update related to the submarine trip. It included multiple photographs of him, including one that showed Harding signing his name on a banner that read "Titanic Expedition Mission V" and another that pictured the submersible vessel itself.

Richard Garriott de Cayeux, president of The Explorers Club, where Harding helped found the board of trustees, said they had spoken just a week earlier about the expedition. 

"When I saw Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit, his excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site," he said in a letter to club members after the sub's disappearance.

Harding was a veteran adventure tourist who also  traveled to space  aboard a Blue Origin rocket last year. Two years ago, he made it to the deepest part of the ocean, traveling with U.S. explorer  Victor Vescovo  to the floor of the Mariana Trench, 35,876 feet below the sea surface. That trip, in a $48 million submersible, earned both explorers the Guinness World Record for the  longest distance traveled  at the deepest part of the ocean by a crewed vessel.

"It was potentially scary, but I was so busy doing so many things — navigating and triangulating my position — that I did not really have time to be scared," Harding told  The Week  after that excursion.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Monday, June 19. Reporting contributed by Emmet Lyons, Roxana Saberi, Alex Sundby, Aimee Picchi, Aliza Chasan, Li Cohen, Caroline Hinson, Anna Noryskiewicz, Analisa Novak and other CBS News staff.

• Newfoundland
• RMS Titanic
• United States Coast Guard

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

More from CBS News

What is OceanGate? Meet the company that made a business out of risky deep-sea tours of the Titanic shipwreck.

• OceanGate is a private research and ocean tourism company founded by CEO Stockton Rush.
• The company has attracted renewed scrutiny since its submersible vessel, Titan, went missing Sunday.
• The five passengers in the vessel, including Rush, were embarking on a Titanic tour.

The search is on for a submersible vessel containing five passengers that was destined for the Titanic ship wreckage before it went missing on Sunday. The vessel at the center of the search mission, called the Titan, is from OceanGate Expeditions, a private research and ocean adventure tourism company. 

As of Wednesday, the vessel hasn't been located, but the five passengers on board have been identified, including Stockton Rush — the OceanGate CEO and founder behind the ocean tourism company.

What is OceanGate?

OceanGate was founded in 2009, with a focus on "increasing access to the deep ocean through innovation of the next generation of crewed submersibles and launch platforms," according to the company's website. The private company is based out of Everett, Washington, and had 47 employees as of April, and has raised a total of $36.81 million in funding, according to data from Pitchbook.

Along with the Titanic expedition tour, the company offers weekly research opportunities to explore the ocean and observe marine life.

Its CEO and founder Rush, who was identified as one of the passengers aboard the missing vessel, has repeatedly stressed a need for balancing safety measures with risk — a point that has gained renewed scrutiny since the vessel went missing. 

Rush, 61, grew up in a wealthy family and originally dreamed of becoming an astronaut, The Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2019. As a student at Princeton University, he told the publication that he juggled his studies in aerospace engineering and work as a commercial pilot.

Rush had a stint working as a flight test engineer for McDonnell Douglas Corporation, before going on to earn a masters in business from the University of California, The Seattle Times reported . Then Rush's plans changed: Rush, who long enjoyed scuba diving, wanted to explore the ocean, The Smithsonian reported. 

Related stories

In an interview with CBS reporter David Pogue in November of last year, Rush said that "You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question." 

The company has also dodged safety rules by operating its exhibitions in international waters, experts previously told Insider. In 2019, OceanGate also said its Titan submersible was not checked to verify the vessel met industry standards, because of its "innovation" and that some of the designs could take years to approve.

In 2018, OceanGate faced a lawsuit from former employee David Lochridge, who said he warned about quality and safety issues related to the Titan vessel. The lawsuit filing claimed that "paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible." In November 2018, an out-of-court settlement was reached.

The Titanic shipwreck expeditions

OceanGate has been conducting expeditions of the Titanic ship wreckage since 2021, according to the company's website . These tours can take five people, one pilot and four crew members, in a submersible vessel down to depths of around 13,000 feet into the ocean, according to the website . The tour has also been reported to cost $250,000 per person. 

The Titanic tour, which happens annually, runs 10 days in total and starts out near the city of St. John's in Newfoundland, where passengers then embark on 8 days of travel at sea, according to the company's website. 

CBS News reporter David Pogue, who previously reported on OceanGate and spent time aboard a Titanic tour, told CBS on Tuesday that the Titan is one of the only vessels in the world capable of reaching the depth of the shipwreck. Over the last three summers, OceanGate has conducted about 25 trips down to the wreckage, Pogue said in the interview. 

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for OceanGate told Insider the company was "unable to provide any additional information at this time."

What is the OceanGate Titan?

The OceanGate submersible used on these Titanic expeditions, called the Titan, is also distinctly different from a submarine : a submersible is launched into the water from a separate ship, does not have a power port, and is smaller than a submarine. 

The submersible is also steered with a video game controller , similar to some US Navy submarine designs that use Xbox 360 controllers. While the design may initially raise some eyebrows, the game controller can make submersibles more reliable, Harvard marine scientist Peter Girguis told Insider .

To go on the trip, crew members need to sign waivers that clearly outline the risks of death . A former passenger on OceanGate's Titan , Mike Reiss told the BBC that "As I was getting onto the sub, that was my thought: 'Well, this could be the end.'"

"So nobody who's in this situation was caught off guard," Reiss, who went on an OceanGate's trip in 2022, told the BBC . "You all know what you are getting into."

Watch: Titan sub raised red flags long before it went missing

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Crew killed in 'catastrophic implosion': Timeline of mission to find OceanGate's missing Titanic submarine

Oceangate's titan sub has less than 30 hours of oxygen remaining.

SUBMARINE TRAGEDY: Timeline of missing Titanic Sub

Timeline of the search for missing Titanic submarine Titan

News of OceanGate Expedition's missing submarine exploded on Monday as the U.S. and Canadian coast guards sprang into action with search and rescue missions. 

Unfortunately, the search came to a tragic end Thursday after rescue officials discovered debris from the imploded vessel near the wreckage of the Titanic. 

Here is the timeline of how OceanGate's Titan submersible went missing during its descent to the wreckage of the Titanic.

U.K. billionaire Hamish Harding, one of the tourists aboard the missing sub, posts to Facebook one day before the sub is set to begin its descent.

"Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023," Harding wrote "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do."

LIVE UPDATES: SEARCH FOR OCEANGATE’S TITAN SUBMARINE  

Inset, from left: Suleman Dawood, Shahzada Dawood, Stockton Rush; Paul-Henry Nargeolet and Hamish Harding died when the OceanGate Titan submersible imploded. (Engro Corp. | Reuters/Shannon Stapleton | @OceanGateExped/Twitter | Felix Kunze/Blue Origin via AP | Ocean Gate/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Harding boards the submersible alongside Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush also boards the submersible, as well as an OceanGate pilot whose identity has not been confirmed.

Critically, the crew are sealed into the vehicle with 17 bolts, and it cannot be opened from the inside. The craft has enough stored oxygen to keep the crew alive for 96 hours.

The Titan then departs the Polar Prince mothership Sunday morning and begins its descent over the wreckage of the Titanic. The ship loses contact with the submersible 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

At this time, U.S. Navy's top secret acoustic detection system picks up sounds that were consistent with either an explosion or an implosion. The Navy passed on that information to the Coast Guard which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive. 

US NAVY DETECTED TITAN SUB IMPLOSION WITH TOP SECRET ACOUSTIC SYSTEM DAY VESSEL WENT MISSING

This file image provided by OceanGate shows the Titan submersible being towed in Everett, Washington. (OceanGate Expeditions)

At an unknown time, OceanGate sounds the alarm from the Polar Prince that the submersible has gone missing.

Immediately, the U.S. Coast Guard Northeast diverts a C-130 aircraft already in the area to begin searching the ocean surface. The Titan is designed to automatically surface in the event of a technical failure. If it is on the surface, rescuers must reach it within the 96-hour window to unseal the vehicle and release the crew.

Some failure may have caused the vehicle to remain stuck underwater. Rescue Coordination Center Halifax in Canada also delivers a P8-Poseidon aircraft, which is capable of dropping sonar buoys that can search underwater.

The U.S. and Canadian coast guards also dispatch more aircraft to the search area, located 900 miles off the U.S. northeast coast.

During this time, Harding's stepson, Brian Szasz, confirms that Harding is on board the submersible in a statement on social media.

This file image provided by OceanGate shows the Titan submersible descending into the ocean. (OceanGate Expeditions)

Rescuers have been searching for roughly 48 hours and have covered 10,000 square miles of ocean, with no sign of the missing submersible.

Engro Corp. confirms that Dawood and his son are aboard the submersible in addition to Harding. OceanGate also confirms that CEO Rush is on board.

IMAGES SHOW OCEANGATE TITAN SUBMARINE'S FINAL MOMENT BEFORE IT BEGAN DIVE TO TITANIC 

"All that we know so far is that contact was lost with their submersible craft," Engro wrote at the time. "There is limited information available beyond this that we know, and we humbly request that speculation and theorization is avoided."

Meanwhile, rescue efforts are ongoing as the U.S. Coast Guard reaches out to both the U.S. Navy and the private sector for assistance. A commercial pipe-laying ship arrives to the area. Rescuers hope it will allow them to search depths of up to 3,800 meters after an unsuccessful night.

The U.S. Coast Guard delivers an update on their rescue efforts and say the Titan craft has 40-41 hours of oxygen remaining as of 1 p.m. ET.

Capt. Jamie Frederick, the response coordinator for the USCG's first district, explains that the Coast Guard does not have the equipment or expertise to conduct deep-sea search and rescue. The U.S., Canada and the private sector are working in concert to provide the necessary equipment and skill for such a search, such as remote-operated vehicles (ROVs) that can dive to the necessary depths.

Officials stressed that they are continuing to search for the submersible on the surface, however.

Assets now searching for the lost submersible include:

• Canadian CGS John Cabot
• Canadian CGS Ann Harvey
• Canadian CGS Terry Fox
• Canadian CGS Atlantic Merlin (ROV)
• Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic
• Commercial Vessel Skandi Vinland (ROV)
• French Research Vessel L’Atalante (ROV)
• His Majesty's Canadian Ship Glace Bay (mobile decompression chamber and medical personnel)

An undated photo shows tourist submersible belongs to OceanGate descents at a sea. Search and rescue operations continue by US Coast Guard in Boston after a tourist submarine bound for the Titanic's wreckage site went missing off the southeastern coast of Canada. (Ocean Gate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The USCG announces that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had detected "underwater noises" in the search area.

As a result, available ROVs were diverted to the area to begin searching. They had found nothing as of 12:18 a.m., but still continued their search.

The Coast Guard says the noise data from the P-3 aircraft, which dropped sonar buoys in the area, has been delivered to the U.S. Navy for further analysis.

The CCGS John Cabot seen docked in North Vancouver, British Columbia on July 6, 2020.  (Malcolm Millar/MarineTraffic)

MISSING TITANIC SUBMARINE: CANADIAN UNDERWATER ROBOT SEARCHES OCEAN FLOOR AS OXYGEN LEVELS DWINDLE

The USCG said Thursday a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) deployed by the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic had found a "debris field" in the search for the missing submersible. 

The USCG later confirmed that the debris was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber" that killed all five men aboard. 

"Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families," U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. "On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families."

USCG said the underwater sounds and banging noises detected earlier were unrelated to the missing submersible. 

In this satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies, from top to bottom, the vessels Horizon Arctic, Deep Energy and Skandi Vinland search for the missing submersible Titan, Thursday, June 22, 2023 in the Atlantic Ocean. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP)

OceanGate Expeditions confirmed that the passengers aboard the missing Titanic submersible are believed to have "sadly been lost." 

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost," OceanGate said in a statement.

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"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew," OceanGate said in part. 

Thursday evening, a U.S. defense official revealed the U.S. Navy detected what it suspected may have been an implosion within hours of the Titan submersible descending into the ocean to visit the Titanic wreckage. The sounds were detected near where the Titan was found.  Fox News' Greg Norman contributed to this report.

Anders Hagstrom is a reporter with Fox News Digital covering national politics and major breaking news events. Send tips to [email protected], or on Twitter: @Hagstrom_Anders.

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Who were the 5 people killed on board the OceanGate Titanic submersible

They included OceanGate's CEO, a researcher, pilot and a businessman and son.

After days of desperate searches throughout the Atlantic Ocean, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday that the five passengers aboard the missing submersible vessel were killed when vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion.

Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet were inside the vessel that embarked on the deep-dive tour, according to OceanGate, the company that operated the submersible. Their families were notified after debris of the vessel was found on the ocean floor, according to the Coast Guard.

"Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew," OceanGate said in a statement Thursday.

The submersible was designed with life support to sustain five crew members for 96 hours. On Thursday, the Coast Guard said it found debris on the ocean floor that was consistent with "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," roughly 1,600 feet from the Titanic wreckage.

The investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Here's what we know about the victims.

Hamish Harding

Hamish Harding was no stranger to exploration.

Harding circumnavigated the Earth in 2019. He made a dive in 2021 to the deepest point on earth, Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench. And he traveled into space last year aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard.

Harding, a British businessman and chairman of Action Aviation, previewed his dive to see the Titanic shipwreck in a Facebook post.

"Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023," he posted on Sunday. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow."

Harding, a licensed air transport pilot who holds three Guinness World Records, was "an extraordinarily accomplished individual who has successfully undertaken challenging expeditions," Action Aviation said in a statement.

Along with his ocean dives and blasting off to space, he helped with "the reintroduction of Cheetahs from Namibia to India" and "has been to the South Pole a number of times," the company said. Harding was inducted in 2022 as a Living Legend of Aviation.

On Thursday afternoon, Harding's family and Action Aviation released a statement saying they were "united in grief with the other families who have also lost their loved ones on the Titan submersible."

"Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply," the statement read. "He was a passionate explorer – whatever the terrain – who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure. What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it’s that we lost him doing what he loved."

"We know that Hamish would have been immensely proud to see how nations, experts, industry colleagues and friends came together for the search and we extend our heartfelt thanks for all their efforts," the family and company added in their statement.

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood

Shahzada Dawood was vice chairman of Engro Corporation Limited, a sprawling business headquartered in Karachi, Pakistan. Suleman Dawood is his son, the family said in a statement.

The Dawoods were both British citizens, according to a colleague.

Shahzada Dawood, a husband and father of two, loved photography, gardening and exploring natural habitats, according to the family.

Suleman Dawood, a university student, was passionate about science fiction literature and learning new things.

Samad Dawood, Shahzada's brother, told ABC News he, his sister and his father all traveled to Newfoundland with hopes of better news.

MORE: Titanic submersible victims' family mourns: 'enormous tragedy and devastation'

Samad Dawood broke down in tears as he reflected on his nephew.

"He was so filled with humbleness and gratitude," he told ABC News. "I think it's sad but also amazing that... his death also brought the world together, and I thank him for it."

Samad Dawood said his brother "inspired in us audacity from a very young age."

"He was always the kind of person who had love for the world," Samad Dawood said. "He was a guy who just wanted to go out there, experience what the world had to offer, even though he himself pushed himself to do it."

The Dawood family released a statement Thursday expressing gratitude for everyone involved in the rescue operations.

"Their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time," they said in the statement. "We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need. The immense love and support we receive continue to help us endure this unimaginable loss."

"We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families of the other passengers on the Titan submersible," the family added. "At this time, we are unable to receive calls and request that support, condolences and prayers be messaged instead. Details of their final rites in this world will be announced soon."

In a statement Thursday night, Engro offered its condolences for both Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.

"With heavy hearts and great sadness, we grieve the loss of our Vice Chairman, Shahzada Dawood, and his beloved son, Suleman Dawood," the company said in the message. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dawood family at this tragic time."

"We extend our heartfelt condolences to the family, colleagues, friends and all those around the world who grieve this unthinkable loss," it added.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, known as PH, a diver and Titanic researcher, was among the passengers. He was the director of Underwater Research at RMS Titanic Inc., according to the company .

Nargeolet led six expeditions to the Titanic site, most recently in 2010.

Stockton Rush

According to OceanGate's website, Stockton Rush "oversees OceanGate’s financial and engineering strategies and provides a clear vision for development of 4,000 meter (13,123 feet) and 6,000 meter (19,685 feet) capable crewed submersibles and their partner launch and recovery platforms."

Rush, who studied aerospace engineering at Princeton University and obtained an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, "has written numerous engineering articles on crewed submersible vehicles in subsea operations," OceanGate's website said.

ABC News' Matt Foster, Miles Cohen, Mark Guarino, Emily Shapiro, Peter Charalambous, Sam Sweeney, Laryssa Demkiw, Gio Benitez and Victoria Beaule contributed to this report.

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June 21, 2023 - Missing Titanic sub search news

By Helen Regan , Jessie Yeung , Adam Renton, Ivana Kottasová , Rob Picheta , Ed Upright, Adrienne Vogt , Aditi Sangal , Elise Hammond and Tori B. Powell , CNN

No seats and one toilet: What it's like inside the submersible

From CNN staff

The missing submersible is a small vessel designed to only hold five people for a day — two hours down, several hours exploring the Titanic and two hours back to the surface.

Last year, the founder of tour operator OceanGate Expeditions showed a CBS team the inside of a submersible used to visit the Titanic's wreckage. The CBS video shows a small chamber, with about as much space as a minivan.

There are no chairs or seats and the passengers sit cross-legged on the floor, having taken off their shoes before entering.

For such an advanced submersible, the interior is mostly bare and simple, with just one button and a screen on the wall. The rest of the vessel's operations are run on a handheld controller that looks remarkably similar to a gaming console, complete with colorful buttons.

There's only one small toilet in the vessel's front, which "doubles as the best seat in the house," according to an OceanGate webpage that's no longer available. It added that when the toilet is being used, they install a privacy curtain "and turn the music up loud."

It recommended that passengers restrict their diet before and during the dive "to reduce the likelihood that you will need to use the facilities."

Watch the video:

Race for specialized deep sea and salvage equipment as search enters fourth day

As the search for the missing submersible enters its fourth day, multiple agencies are racing against time to get the specialized equipment needed for their efforts.

While a lot of the search has been focused on the surface of the water, the team now has underwater search capability on scene, US Coast Guard First District Commander Rear Adm. John Mauger said Tuesday.

If search crews locate the missing submersible deep in the ocean, authorities will then face a highly complex mission to recover the craft and any survivors.

The Titanic wreckage lies around 12,500 feet below sea level — about 10 times the height of the Empire State Building.

Here's where the search is on Day 4:

• Joint operation: The US Coast Guard has been coordinating with the US Navy and Canadian Coast Guard since Sunday. Due to its familiarity with the site, submersible operator OceanGate is helping to set priorities, Mauger said. The US Coast Guard said a Bahamian research vessel was also conducting remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operations.
• Pipe-laying vessel: On Tuesday, the vessel Deep Energy , a 194-meter pipe-laying vessel with underwater capabilities, arrived on scene and rendezvoused with the Polar Prince, the vessel the submersible launched from at its last known position, said Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District.
• Assets en route: Other vessels are on the way, including some privately owned crafts that are "making preparations" to help with the "very complex" search, Mauger said. The US Coast Guard said additional assets joining include several Canadian vessels such as a ship with a mobile decompression chamber and medical personnel.
• International help: French President Emmanuel Macron has ordered the dispatch of the research ship Atalante to join the search, which is equipped with an underwater robot that can reach as deep as 4,000 meters [13,000 feet].
• Deep ocean salvage: The US Navy is sending experts and a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System to assist. The FADOSS is a "motion compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels." A Navy information page on the FADOSS says it can lift up to 60,000 pounds.
• Magellan ROVs: Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, best known for its  imagery of the Titanic and whose deep sea diving equipment is able to reach the depths, is trying to get involved in the search. But most of that equipment is in Europe and needs a C-17 Globemaster III military cargo jet with the ability to deliver it to Canada, Magellan's chair said.
• US military assets: The US military is moving assets to help, according to the Coast Guard and US Transportation Command. The assets will be moved first to St. John’s in Canada and then taken to the search area. It is unclear what assets or equipment are on the flights or to whom they belong. The Pentagon has also said it is assisting.
• From the air: Two C-130 aircraft made search and rescue flights over the area on Monday, and an Air National Guard C-130 joined efforts Tuesday, the Pentagon said. Meanwhile, Air National Guard members including a team of pararescue jumpers flew 900 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean in a HC-130J Combat King aircraft, where they deployed infrared radar, the New York Air National Guard said.
• Recovering the sub: Ret. Navy Capt.  Ray Scott "Chip" McCord said: “There’s very few assets in the world that can go down that deep." Once crews have narrowed their search, they could deploy a cargo van-sized remote-operated craft to locate the submersible," he said . The ROV is tethered to a surface ship with a 2-inch thick cable to provide power and communication. It could be moved to a Canadian port by military aircraft, loaded onto a ship by crane, and then steamed to the search site, McCord said. However, US military ROVs have electric motors and cameras, but do not have the capacity to lift the missing vessel, he added.  

Expert tells CNN recovery will happen in phases if rescuers can locate the missing submersible

Rick Murcar, owner of Aquatic Adventures of Florida, described the phases of recovery that rescuers will go through if they can locate the missing submersible.

"Phase one is locate. Obviously phase two is confirm the status of the people and is a recovery possible? Phase three ... let's hope a recovery can take place," Murcar told CNN.

"That's going to be a long process," he added.

Coast Guard officials on Tuesday afternoon estimated there is "about 40 hours of breathable air left" in the submersible, which went missing Sunday on a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

So far, the Coast Guard and its partners' search efforts have "not yielded any results," Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District Response Department, said Tuesday.

Titanic's fate has long been a source of fascination. Here are some key facts about the luxury liner

The submersible that has gone missing in the North Atlantic was part of an expedition to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, perhaps the most famous shipwreck in the world.

More than 100 years after its disastrous maiden voyage, the fate of the luxury liner has long served as a source of fascination , and been the backdrop for countless books, fiction and non-fiction and, of course, a blockbuster movie.

The ship set sail from Southampton, England, to New York on April 10, 1912.

Then, between April 14 to 15, it hit an iceberg around midnight and sank in less than three hours.

A total of 1,517 people died and 706 survived out of 2,223 passengers and crew, according to the  US Senate report  on the disaster.

Here are more interesting facts about the Titanic:

The ship: The estimated cost of construction was $7.5 million. At the time, the RMS Titanic was the largest passenger ship afloat. The ship’s length was 882 feet, 9 inches, and it weighed 46,328 tons. Its top speed was 23 knots. The wreckage is located about 350 miles off the southeast coast of Newfoundland.

How the Titanic sank: The iceberg punctured five of 16 supposedly watertight compartments designed to hold water in case of a breach to the hull. Investigations at the time blamed Capt. Edward Smith for going too fast in dangerous waters, initial ship inspections that had been done too quickly, insufficient room in the lifeboats for all passengers, and a nearby ship’s failure to help. Many maritime safety reforms were implemented as a result of the findings of the investigations.

Smith went down with the ship, and his body was never recovered.

Key dates post-shipwreck:

• September 1, 1985: Scientists from Woods Hole Deep Submergence LAB in Massachusetts, led by Dr. Robert Ballard, and IFREMER, the French Institute Francais de Recherche pour l’Exploitation des Mers, led by Jean Jarry, locate the wreckage of Titanic.
• July 13, 1986: Ballard and his crew use the manned deep-ocean research submersible Alvin to explore the wreckage. The Alvin is accompanied by a remotely operated vehicle named Jason Jr. to conduct photographic surveys and further inspections.
• May 31, 2009: The last known survivor, Millvina Dean, dies at age 97.
• April 8-20, 2012: The 100th anniversary of the Titanic’s voyage. The MS Balmoral traces the ship’s route from Southampton to New York and holds a memorial service, above the wreck, on April 15.
• Summer, 2022: Deep sea investigators Magellan and filmmakers Atlantic Productions use deep sea mapping to create "an exact ‘Digital Twin’ of the Titanic wreck for the first time."

Read more here .

Search teams should send assets "right away" after banging heard, expert says

A renowned oceanographer said Tuesday he was "hopeful" after banging sounds  were heard during the search for the missing  Titan submersible — and teams must not wait to "get assets there."

"My hope is that they spent a lot of time and assets trying to locate where the bangs are coming from," said David Gallo , senior adviser for strategic initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc.

"Time is of the essence because once you ... have an area where you know that the bangs are coming from ... you need to get assets there — submarines and robots — over that spot to investigate.

Friend aboard: Gallo called French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who is one of five people on board the missing vessel, his "very good friend."

He "is the kind of person that if he were in that submarine, he would think this thoroughly through and would do something like that every 30 minutes," Gallo told CNN.

"But they have to get moving, get stuff over there right away."

US Coast Guard says underwater noises detected but subsequent searches "yielded negative results"

The US Coast Guard said early Wednesday that a Canadian aircraft assisting with search operations "detected underwater noises in the search area" but subsequent searches "yielded negative results."

"Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue," the Coast Guard said in a tweet . "Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our US Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans."

Earlier, an internal US government memo said crews searching for the submersible heard banging at 30 minute intervals, and a Canadian P3 aircraft also located a white rectangular object in the water.

It is unclear whether the update from the US Coast Guard relates to the same event.

Explorers Club says its working on approval for deep-sea mapping company to join the search

From CNN's Dave Alsup

Explorers Club President Richard Garriott de Cayeux said they are continuing to work on getting approval for deep sea-mapping company Magellan to be allowed to deploy and assist in the search for the missing submersible.

Magellan, best known for its  one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic , operates deep-sea diving equipment, including Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) capable of reaching the needed depths, according to its website.

In a letter sent to club membership Tuesday, Cayeux listed four points, which he said gave the club "much greater confidence."

Here's what he said:

• There is cause for hope, based on data from the field – we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site 
• They precisely understand the experienced personnel and tech we can help deploy
• We believe they are doing everything possible with all resources they have
• We now have direct lines to the highest levels of Congress, The Coast Guard, Air Force, Navy and The White House, thanks to your support. We continue to work on approval for the Magellan ROVs to be allowed to deploy to the site as we believe they can provide invaluable assistance

Magellan says they need a plane: Earlier Tuesday, CNN spoke with Magellan’s chairman David Thompson, who said his company had received written notice from OceanGate Expeditions to mobilize early Monday and help.  

However, they need an aircraft with the ability to transport their deep-sea diving equipment from the UK to Canada to launch their operation. Specifically, he said, they would require the use of a C-17 Globemaster III military jet.  

Thompson said the US Air Force or UK Royal Airforce have not gotten back to Magellan letting them know if or when a plane can be procured for them to use to transport the equipment they need to Canada to embark on rescue efforts.

Search crews racing to find the missing sub heard banging sounds Tuesday. Here's what to know

Crews searching for the Titan submersible that went missing near the wreckage of the Titanic heard banging sounds in 30 minute intervals Tuesday, according to an internal government memo update on the search. Banging was still heard four hours later, after additional sonar devices were deployed.

It was unclear when the banging was heard on Tuesday or for how long, based on the memo. A subsequent update sent Tuesday night suggested more sounds were heard, though it was not described as “banging.” Still, it indicates "continued hope of survivors," the update said.

It comes as the five people onboard have less than 40 hours of breathable air left, the US Coast Guard said Tuesday at about 1 p.m. ET — more than 11 hours ago.

Here's where things stand :

• Some background:  The submersible was part of an eight-day expedition to the Titanic conducted by  OceanGate Expeditions . The search is focused around the site of the shipwreck, about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. The submersible began its  two-hour descent Sunday morning . It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, less than two hours into its descent, officials said. Search operations began later that day.
• Latest on search efforts:  The urgent search has not yielded anything so far, but the US Coast Guard is working  "around the clock"  to try to find the missing submersible, Capt. Jamie Frederick, with the First Coast Guard District Response Department, said in a briefing Tuesday. In addition to looking on the surface of the water, the team has underwater search capability on the scene, another Coast Guard official said. Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, most famously known for its  one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic , is also working to get its  equipment to the site . Weather and fog  complicated aerial search efforts  Monday, according to officials. But, conditions cleared up on Tuesday.
• Collaborative assistance:  The US Navy is sending experts and a “Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System” — which can lift small vessels — to assist, a spokesperson said Tuesday. The US military is  moving military and commercial assets , according to the Coast Guard and US Transportation Command. France said it has dispatched a ship with an  underwater robot .
• Who is inside:  There are  five people in  the submersible, according to multiple authorities. One of them is Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, the company leading the voyage, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan. The others are British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
• Family and friends of passengers:  A friend of Harding told CNN the explorer is  “larger than life " and would be “calm and collected” in an emergency. A colleague of Nargeolet said the community of explorers and scientists is  "in shock."  Another friend of the French submariner said he had been to the Titanic wreckage  dozens of times  and dedicated his professional life to its history.
• Safety concerns: Industry leaders expressed concerns five years ago about OceanGate's "experimental approach" to the Titan submersible and its planned Titanic trip,  the New York Times reported. Specifically, it expressed concern over the company's compliance with a maritime risk assessment certification known as DNV-GL. Separately, two former OceanGate employees  voiced safety concerns years ago about the sub's hull, and a statement from a research lab appears to show conflicting information about the engineering and testing that went into the development of the vessel.

Banging sounds heard during Titan search Tuesday, according to internal government memo

From CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez

Crews  searching for the Titan submersible  heard banging sounds every 30 minutes Tuesday, according to an internal government memo update on the search.

Four hours later, after additional sonar devices were deployed, banging was still heard, the memo said. It was unclear when the banging was heard Tuesday or for how long, based on the memo.

A subsequent update sent Tuesday night suggested more sounds were heard, though it was not described as “banging.”

A Canadian P3 aircraft also located a white rectangular object in the water, according to that update, but another ship set to investigate was diverted to help research the acoustic feedback instead, according to that update.

The Joint Rescue Coordination Center is working to find an underwater remote operated vehicle to help assist in the search, according to the memo.

CNN has reached out to OceanGate, the US Coast Guard in Boston and Canadian authorities for comment.

Rolling Stone  was first to report the news Tuesday night.

CNN’s Andy Rose and Paul Murphy contributed to this report.

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How much is the Titanic sub tour? Inside the exclusive OceanGate expedition and why it costs so much

Government agencies, us and canadian navies and commercial deep-sea firms have joined efforts to find the vessel belonging to tour firm oceangate.

A search is under way after a submersible that takes tourists to view the wreck of the Titanic went missing in the Atlantic Ocean .

Government agencies, US and Canadian navies and commercial deep-sea firms have joined efforts to find the vessel belonging to tour firm OceanGate.

The luxury tour company that promises unforgettable expeditions to see the wreckage of the Titanic has confirmed one of its submersibles has gone missing.

“We are exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely,” OceanGate said in a statement.

Who are Ocean Gate and how much does it cost?

OceanGate is a Washington-based company that has been offering trips to the wreck for several years , with six guests per voyage paying $250,000 (£195,000) for the privilege. This includes a guided tour around the famous ship 13,000ft beneath the sea, as well as luxury hospitality aboard an expedition vessel.

“You will arrive at depth, and after some navigating across the seafloor and debris field, finally see what you’ve been waiting for: the RMS Titanic ,” says the company in its brochure.

The wreck of the Titanic lies about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Without any cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we are relying on @Starlink to provide the communications we require throughout this year’s 2023 Titanic Expedition. More: https://t.co/F7OtKI0En7 pic.twitter.com/wr7HeKlGjj — OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 14, 2023

“The content expert on board will point out key features, be they of the wreck itself or the life that calls this corner of the ocean home. Enjoy hours of exploring the wreck and debris field before making the two-hour ascent to the surface.”

The eight-day 2023 expedition was listed as “underway” on a cached page of the OceanGate website, with the original no longer online. The company did not answer calls to its office.

It is extremely exclusive, with the company saying it offers “a select number of individuals to explore the vessel that was once the height of opulence, but whose journey would end tragically”. It says it is a “once in a lifetime opportunity” to travel in the world’s only carbon-fibre submersible capable of diving five people.

OceanGate founder, businessman Stockton Rush, founded the company in 2009 promising to make the depths of the oceans accessible.

The former aerospace engineer told CBS News last year that the Titanic trips represent “a new type of travel”, blending adventure, luxury and history.

What happened to the Titanic tourist sub after it goes missing in Atlantic Ocean

The famous wreck holds a powerful allure that draws passionate guests, he said.

“We have clients that are Titanic enthusiasts, which we refer to as Titaniacs,” Mr Rush added. “We’ve had people who have mortgaged their home to come and do the trip. And we have people who don’t think twice about a trip of this cost. We had one gentleman who had won the lottery.”

The expeditions also double as research opportunities for scientists, allowing them to study rare species in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Visitors are warned that the experience can be unpredictable, with weather conditions interfering with previous expeditions.

OceanGate is one of several companies offering trips to the Titanic , located around 370 miles off the Canadian coast, with demand said to be intense. Scientists had previously warned that the number of visits from filmmakers and explorers was damaging the wreck.

Tourist visits to the Titanic have been controversial, with some relatives of victims of the 1912 disaster saying they are disrespectful to the dead.

What happened?

The sub normally communicates with its pilot ship the Polar Prince every 15 minutes but contact was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the US Coast Guard said.

“We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to re-establish contact with the submersible,” OceanGate said in a statement.

“We are working toward the safe return of the crew members.”

Rear Adm John Mauger of the US Coast Guard told a press conference they are doing “everything” they can to find the submersible.

“Right now, our focus is getting on as much capability into the area as we can,” he said on Monday, adding: “We anticipate that there’s somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours at this point.

“It is a remote area and a challenge, but we are deploying all available assets.”

The US Coast Guard said the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince and 106 Rescue wing will continue to conduct surface searches while the US Coast Guard sent two C-130 flights to search for the missing submersible.

Who was on board the sub?

Five people were onboard the vessel, including one pilot and two “mission specialists”.

Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood have been named as two of the other people on the submersible in a family statement.

“We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety,” the statement said.

Among the crew is British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding , chairman of private plane firm Action Aviation.

In a subsequently deleted Facebook post, Mr Harding’s stepson wrote that he had “gone missing on a submarine” and asked for “thoughts and prayers”.

The last pictures from before the dive were shared on Action Aviation’s Instagram account, depicting the submersible setting off into the depths.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cto-21dMXpx/?hl=en

Mark Butler, managing director of Action Aviation, said: “There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission, there is equipment on board for survival in this event. We’re all hoping and praying he comes back safe and sound.”

Mr Harding holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel when in March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

His cousin, Kathleen Cosnett, told The Daily Telegraph she saw Mr Harding as “daring” and “inquisitive”, and that she was “devastated” to learn he was missing.

On social media at the weekend, he said he was “proud to finally announce” he would be aboard the mission to the wreck of the Titanic , the luxury ocean liner which hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing more than 1,500 people.

The Explorer’s Club, of which Mr Harding is a founding member of, shared the news of his disappearance on Instagram with club president Richard Garriot saying: “When I saw Hamish last week… his excitement about this expedition was palpable,” he said.

“I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site. We all join in the fervent hope that the submersible is located as quickly as possible and the crew is safe.”

Where is the wreckage of the Titanic?

The shipwreck of the Titanic is 3,800 metres down on the bed of the Atlantic Ocean, roughly 600km (370 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

The passenger liner hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912, with more than 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew onboard dying.

The wreckage was discovered in 1985.

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Experts raised safety concerns about OceanGate years before its Titanic sub vanished

Rachel Treisman

OceanGate uses its Titan vessel to take tourists deep below sea level to visit the Titanic shipwreck. It disappeared in the North Atlantic during one such trip on Sunday. AP hide caption

OceanGate uses its Titan vessel to take tourists deep below sea level to visit the Titanic shipwreck. It disappeared in the North Atlantic during one such trip on Sunday.

Experts from within and outside OceanGate raised concerns about the safety of its Titan submersible as far back as 2018, years before it went missing during a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck site.

Several of those complaints have resurfaced this week, as the frantic search for the vessel — and its five passengers — continues.

Missing Titanic sub search enters a critical phase as the Titan's oxygen supply drops

"It hasn't surprised us," said Will Kohnen, the chair of the Marine Technology Society's Submarine Committee (formerly the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee), about the Titan's disappearance. "We've been aware of this project for some time and have had some concerns."

In March 2018, after one of the international industry group's annual conferences, Kohnen drafted a letter to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — the pilot of the missing vessel — expressing "unanimous concern" on behalf of its members about the development of the Titan and its planned Titanic expeditions.

"Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry," he wrote, according to a copy obtained by the New York Times .

OceanGate wants to change deep-sea tourism, but its missing sub highlights the risks

NPR has reached out to OceanGate for comment.

Kohnen told Morning Edition 's A Martínez on Wednesday that the group's main concern was a lack of oversight and adherence to industry-accepted safety guidelines.

"Most of the companies in this industry that are building submersibles and deep submersibles follow a fairly well-established framework of certification and verification and oversight, through classification societies," he said. "And that was at the root of OceanGate's project, is that they were going to go solo, going without that type of official oversight, and that brought a lot of concerns."

Deep sea rescues have a mixed track record. The Pisces III is one that succeeded

Kohnen doesn't see Titan's disappearance as a reason to take a step back from deep sea explorations as a whole.

"We have submarines all over the world diving 12,000 to 20,000 feet every day of the year for research," he said. "We know very well how to build and how to design these machines and how to operate them safely."

The same is true for tourism purposes, he adds: "It just gets expensive."

OceanGate's push to innovate worried industry experts

Third-party agencies around the world, like the American Bureau of Shipping and DNV in Europe, are responsible for overseeing structures like ships, oil platforms and submarines to ensure that they're designed to specification, Kohnen explained.

That process involves publishing rules and sending out engineers to review designs and inspectors to witness testing.

Most major marine operators require chartered vessels to be "classed" by one of these independent groups, OceanGate acknowledged in a 2019 blog post . However, it said that process only assesses physical vessels, not a company's operating procedures and decision-making processes, which are more often to blame for accidents.

A former passenger details what it's like inside the missing Titan submersible

The company affirmed its commitment to operational safety and risk mitigation, touting its "constant, committed effort and a focused corporate culture." But it also painted the third-party approval process as "anathema to rapid innovation," its founding principle.

"By definition, innovation is outside of an already accepted system," the blog post reads. "However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, but it does mean that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm."

Kohnen said that while his letter was never officially submitted to OceanGate, he did have a conversation with Rush in which the two "agreed to disagree." He points out that the complaint that regulatory bodies are slow to react to new innovations isn't unique to submarines.

"All industries face the same issue," Kohnen added. "And it is a careful dance of how do you push regulations forward in the face of rapid-changing technology."

The OceanGate logo is pictured on a boat at the Port of Everett Boat Yard in Everett, Wash., on Tuesday. Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

The OceanGate logo is pictured on a boat at the Port of Everett Boat Yard in Everett, Wash., on Tuesday.

A former employee says he was fired after raising concerns

OceanGate's own former director of marine operations also flagged potential safety issues with the Titan around the same time — and says he was fired after doing so, as NPR station WBUR reported .

David Lochridge, himself an experienced submarine pilot, alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that he was fired after raising concerns that the company wasn't properly testing the vessel's carbon fiber hull. He had also pushed for the company to utilize a classification agency to inspect and certify it.

Lochridge said he first raised his safety and quality control concerns verbally to executive management, which ignored them. He then sought to address the problems and offer solutions in a report.

'Tiny sub, big ocean': Why the Titanic submersible search is so challenging

The day after it was submitted, the lawsuit says, various engineering and HR executives invited him to a meeting at which he learned that the viewport of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, even though the Titanic shipwreck lies nearly 4,000 meters below sea level.

Lochridge reiterated his concerns, but the lawsuit alleges that rather than take corrective action, OceanGate "did the exact opposite."

"OceanGate gave Lochridge approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises," it said.

OceanGate said in legal filings that it had relied on acoustic tests "better suited" to detect safety issues, and accused Lochridge of breaching his contract, according to WBUR.

"The company said Lochridge was not an engineer and refused to accept assurances from the lead engineer that testing was sufficient," WBUR's Walter Wuthmann told Morning Edition .

They settled out of court in 2018.

Previous expeditions haven't all gone smoothly

The Titan made its first dive to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and returned the following year — though those trips haven't been without issue .

Greek court orders smuggling suspects held pending trial over migrant ship disaster

OceanGate acknowledged in legal filings that the vessel had encountered a battery issue and some external damage during its maiden voyage.

CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue said the submersible lost contact with the surface crew for about five hours during his expedition in 2022 and told NPR that a mechanical issue forced the vessel to abort a November trip after making it 37 feet down.

He said he's since learned that such dives "rarely go to plan."

"With each of these expeditions that OceanGate makes, they spend five days over the [Titanic] shipwreck," Pogue said. "And typically of those five days, they managed to get down only once or twice. And this season it's been zero."

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The missing Titanic tour sub is steered with a simple Logitech gamepad

The us navy has used gamepads to control submarine periscopes, while oceangate is using one to operate the five-person titan submersible..

By Richard Lawler , a senior editor following news across tech, culture, policy, and entertainment. He joined The Verge in 2021 after several years covering news at Engadget.

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On Sunday morning, an OceanGate submarine vessel with five people aboard went missing in the Atlantic about an hour and forty-five minutes into a planned trip to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. Made of carbon fiber and titanium, the vessel has enough air for 96 hours; however, as word of the emergency has spread, there’s also shock at the wireless Logitech F710 gamepad used for steering.

The Titan advertises “state-of-the-art lighting and sonar navigation systems plus internally and externally mounted 4K video and photographic equipment,” and this CBS News Sunday Morning segment from David Pogue, taken last summer, showed the reporter laughing as he was shown its controls. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush holds up the F710, saying, “We run the whole thing... with this game controller.” The reporter refers to the “MacGyver jury-riggedness” of the whole thing, using many off-the-shelf parts, as Rush said, “certain things, you want to be button down,” noting work with Boeing and NASA.

This isn’t entirely unusual — as we’ve mentioned previously, the US Navy uses gamepads to control submarine periscopes and the photonic masts that have replaced them, and The Boring Company has shown an Xbox One controller steering one of its massive drilling machines .

Gamepads are versatile, comfortable, and familiar to use, but I’ve had controllers malfunction during intense matches enough times to raise an eyebrow at seeing a fairly generic wirelessly connected device being relied on for something so important. This isn’t just the periscope, as described by Rush — it’s the vessel itself.

Trips aboard the five-person Titan submersible reportedly cost $250,000 per seat. A release signed prior to the expedition explains that “this experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death.”

Other elements of Pogue’s experience are more distressing. During one of the dives, as he remained on the ship, the submersible got lost for hours and never found the wreckage, while OceanGate shut off internet access during that time, saying it needed all available channels to try to maintain contact with the sub.

It’s unclear what kind of internet connection was available on the ship then, but OceanGate tweeted last week that its 2023 expeditions are relying on Starlink’s satellite internet service to communicate with the outside world. Without GPS, the Titan is guided underwater via text messages sent from the surface ship; however, in a BBC News interview , Pogue noted those might only work when the sub is directly beneath the ship.

He also said in a tweet that it’s not equipped with an emergency locator beacon that might help rescuers find it, either on the ocean floor or once it’s risen to the surface. The submarine is also bolted from the outside, so those in it would need rescuers to get them out, even once it makes its way to the surface, using one of several methods available.

The location of the trip is listed as about 380 nautical miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The US Coast Guard has been part of the search since Sunday morning, using aircraft with sonar to search underwater, sonar buoys, sonar from the expedition ship, and looking on the surface. The latest update from the Coast Guard said the search area completed as of this morning is 10,000 square miles, and they have scheduled a press briefing for 1PM ET with further updates.

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A movie about the failed titan submersible is already in the works, the company behind the doomed titanic tourist submersible has “suspended all exploration and commercial operations.”, crews have begun recovering debris from the titan submersible., mr. beast’s titan sub blue bubble mystery solved..

Here Is How Much Oxygen Is Left In The Missing Titanic Tour Submarine

This is so tragic, and fills me with copious amounts of anxiety and dread.

By now you have heard about the mini submarine vessel that is lost at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean about 400 miles southeast of the Newfoundland coast.

This sub was designed to carry tourists down to the lowest depths of the ocean for $250,000 a pop per seat.

It was on a mission to explore the famous Titanic shipwreck when things went really wrong.

The Polar Prince, the main research ship, lost contact with the vessel, called the Titan, about an hour and 45 minutes after it launched into the water.

Titan, a 21-foot long submersible vessel was manned by 5 people hoping to view the wreckage of the Titanic.

It hasn’t been heard since Sunday morning.

When it started out, the Titan had 96 hours of emergency oxygen, although they never thought they were going to have to use it.

You do the math. 24 hours in a day. It went down Sunday morning.

This isn’t looking good.

They are estimating there is enough oxygen to last until 2:30pm EST Thursday, so the race continues to try and find the Titan.

There are other things that could have happened.

It is unlikely, but it might have imploded from the pressure of the ocean.

There is also the possibility that it sprung a leak and flooded.

There have been banging sounds heard in the ocean while they are searching for the Titan, so it is possible the 5 people are still alive.

We are hoping and praying for the best.

Seriously. Read it: Here Is How Much Oxygen Is Left In The Missing Titanic Tour Submarine