Ottawa: The rescue mission for the missing submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic has reached a critical point, with the supply of oxygen on board now believed to have run out.
The rescue officials are awaiting some sought of miracle.
It comes as the first robot deployed in the rescue mission, deployed from Canadian ship Horizon Arctic, reached the sea floor – with a French ROV set to reach the wreckage in a matter of hours.
The US Coast Guard said the vessel had around 96 hours of oxygen left when it went missing on Sunday, estimating the supply would run out at around midday UK time today.
More rescue ships arrived today to aid in the search for missing Titan, with hopes pinned on the arrival of a French underwater robot called Victor 6,000.
It comes after US Coast Guard officials on Wednesday said they remained “hopeful” after sonar detected unidentified “underwater noises”.
The Ocean Gate-owned Titan was launched from the Polar Prince — the submersible’s mothership — at 08:00 local time which was thought to come back to the sea surface at 15:00 Instead, it lost contact.
The submersible, named Titan, began its descent at 8am on Sunday and had been due to resurface seven hours later, according to the US Coast Guard.
Titan was carrying British billionaire Hamish Harding and Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who also have British citizenship. Ocean Gate Expeditions charges $250,000 for a seat on the sub.
The 21-foot (6.5-meter) tourist craft lost communication with its mothership less than two hours into its trip to see the Titanic, which sits more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below the surface of the North Atlantic.
According to the Coast Guard, they were intimated about the missing submersible after eight hours.
The submersible Titan is a tourism vessel owned by a private company OceanGate which takes tourists to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic in the North Atlantic.
Submersibles and submarines are not interchangeable thus both are different. A submarine is an independent vessel which stores enough fuel to travel from the port and come back whereas a submersible does not have enough power and is launched through a mothership and is recovered. A Submersible is a kind of scuba diver which explores deep sea and comes back at a particular point and is then later brought to port.
