The crew of the doomed expedition to the Titanic wreckage has less than 24 hours’ worth of oxygen left provided they are still alive aboard the submersible.
The authorities and rescue teams are racing against time to locate and rescue Titan, an OceanGate submersible that lost all contact with the surface just less than two hours after they set on a trip to visit the sunken Titanic on Sunday.
It has since the sub went missing been revealed that the crew consists of five members including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and Dawood’s 19-year-old son Sulaiman.
Since the vessel is equipped with oxygen reserves that can last five people just up to 96 hours, this means the crew now has less than a day to be rescued or perish 12,000 feet underwater.
Currently, two submersibles with capabilities to dive 20,000 feet deep are leading the search for missing Titan and its crew in hopes they can locate Titan in time to do something to save the crew.
Officials also confirmed that more submersibles are on the way to aid in the search.
Meanwhile, it has also been revealed that the search for the missing OceanGate vessel expanded to 14,000 square miles.
Once located, Titan will require specialized tools and considerable effort to be pulled to the surface depending on its condition and location.
The news comes as the US Coast Guard officials confirmed they detected “banging noises” – possibly created by the crew to alert rescuers – in the area where Titan was last spotted.
Unfortunately, the initial search to investigate these sounds yielded no 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 USCG shared in a tweet at 12:18 pm on June 21.
“Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our U.S. Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans.”
More noises have since been detected, reports say.
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