Submersible meant to take tourists to Titanic wreck goes missing in Atlantic Ocean

Asubmersible, which was meant to take tourists to view the wreck of the Titanic,went missing in the Atlantic Ocean, UK-based news outlet BBC reported on Monday (June 19).

The Boston Coastguard told the media outlet that currently, a search and rescueoperation was underway to find the submersible.

So far, there is no update on how many people were on board; however, the submersible is designed to carry five people, including three paying guests, one pilot and one "content expert."

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According to his family, Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British billionaire entrepreneur and adventurer, is reported missing on a submarine. Earlier, Harding had announced on social media his participation in a mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

However, he noted that the mission could be the only manned expedition to the Titanic in 2023 due to the severe winter conditions in Newfoundland, which is experiencing its worst winter in 40 years. Recently, he mentioned that a favourable weather opportunity has emerged, and they plan to undertake a dive tomorrow.

Ever since the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York in April 1912, the shipwreck has been explored extensively after it was first discovered in 1985 around 650 kilometres off the coast of Canada.

Records have mentioned that ofthe estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died.

3D scan of the Titanic shipwreck

Earlier this year in May, the first full-sized 3D scan of the Titanic shipwreck was published. Experts expected the scans to reveal intricate details about the ocean liner's fateful journey across the Atlantic more than a century ago.

The high-resolution images were published by BBC. The scan reconstructed the wreck that lies at a depth of nearly 4,000 metres in great detail. The images were created using deep-sea mapping.

The report mentioned that deep-sea mapping companies Magellan Ltd and Atlantic Productions carried out the reconstruction process in 2022. They were making a documentary about the project.

Submersibles remotely controlled by a specialist ship spent over 200 hours surveying the wreck at the bottom of the Atlantic, taking over 700,000 images to create the scan.

As quoted by BBC, Magellan's Gerhard Seiffert, who led the planning for the expedition, said that the team was not allowed to touch anything "so as not to damage the wreck".

Seiffert had said, "The other challenge is that you have to map every square centimetre -- even uninteresting parts, like on the debris field you have to map mud, but you need this to fill in between all these interesting objects."

The images showed that the stern and bow of the giant liner were lying apart surrounded by debris, it looked like they were lifted from the water, revealing even the smallest details, like the serial number on one of the propellers.

Experts argued that the latest scans may shed more light on what exactly happened to the liner, with historians and scientists racing against time as the ship is disintegrating.

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(With inputs from agencies)

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