The deadline to find the missing Titanic sub has passed and all of the oxygen has ran out on the vessel.
A frantic international effort was scrambled to try and find the five passengers stuck on the Titan sub before the four-day oxygen supply expired. A US Coast Guard spokesperson previously said it will run out at exactly 12.08pm in the UK this afternoon.
The craft submerged Sunday morning, and the support vessel subsequently lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes afterwards.
Rescue teams were looking for Pakistani British-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulaiman Dawood, 19, French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and chief executive and founder of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush.
The Horizon Arctic ship travelled 400 miles overnight across the Atlantic and arrived at the site of Titanic wreckage site last night after travelling 400 miles overnight across the Atlantic Ocean from Canada.
The vessel arrived with heavy duty cables and it was reported to be the last major support ship to arrive before the oxygen on the submersible runs out, according to the US Coast Guard. The ship, left at 10.24pm on Wednesday evening from St John's port in Canada and arrived eight and half hours later.
The Canadian P-3 aircraft had picked up "banging" noises as it tried locate the origin of the noises after US Coast Guard confirmed it had heard the sounds on Tuesday night and into Wednesday. The vessel was reported overdue about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
A spokesperson for US Air Mobility Command said that three C-17 transport planes from the US military were used to move commercial submersible and support equipment from Buffalo, New York, to St. John’s, Newfoundland, to aid in the rescue effort.
The US Navy said on Wednesday that it was sending a specialised salvage system that’s capable of hoisting “large, bulky and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels.” At least 10,000 square miles of the ocean had been searched.
However, Rear Admiral John Mauger said yesterday it was unclear if the banging came from the submersible, as the noise became the "focus" of the mission.
Mr Mauger revealed they "don't know the source of that noise" but have reported the data with the US Navy. However, an initial attempt to locate the submarine had “yielded negative results.”
A US Coast Guard official said the efforts to find the vessel remained a “search and rescue mission, 100 percent.”
The Titan was launched from an icebreaker that was hired by OceanGate and formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard. The ship has ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan had already made multiple dives before disaster struck.
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