The race to find the missing Titanic submersible

An international search and rescue team is racing against time to find a tourist submersible that went missing during a recent dive to explore the wreck of the Titanic. And to be perfectly frank, things aren’t looking good😬.

The five-person craft, named Titan, lost contact with the surface on Sunday morning, soon after making its initial dive to visit the famous shipwreck (which lies ~13,000 feet below the surface). It has not reopened communication.

And while in dire situations like this it’d be amazing if the Staples “Easy” button was real, that’s unfortunately not the case – leaving officials with two big obstacles to overcome to pull off a rescue:

• The logistics required to search the ocean depths, which can reach pressures 200x that of a car tire.
• Time. Titan only has enough oxygen to last its crew 96 hours, meaning it’ll run out of air sometime tomorrow morning.

🌊 How could this have happened?... A Canadian plane using sonar picked up underwater noises in the search area late last night, but this has so far "yielded negative results" according to the Coast Guard. So at this point, everything is still speculative: power blackout, fire, flood, pressure leak, or the craft getting entangled in something (like the Titanic’s wreckage).

• If it’s one of the first three options, the craft could be bobbing on the surface somewhere waiting to be opened (its pressurized cabin is sealed from the outside). Submersibles typically have a drop weight, or a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface.