By Athena Papakosta

The submarine ‘Titan’ sank at 4am on Sunday and lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support vessel that brought it to the area an hour and 45 minutes after it sank in the Atlantic Ocean. According to estimates, the underwater research vessel was 1,450 kilometers off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The underwater research and tourism vessel was carrying its operator and four passengers. They are world-renowned French explorer, director of underwater research at the company that owns the rights to the Titanic wreck and former naval officer Paul Henri Narzolet, 77, British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding, 58, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, 19, and Stockton Rush, 61, founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions – the company that had undertaken the expedition to the Titanic wreck in question.

The purpose of the trip was for the crew to admire up close one of the most historic shipwrecks, that of the “Titanic” which on its maiden voyage in 1912 hit an iceberg and for 101 years has been 3,800 meters at the bottom of the Atlantic, 600 kilometers from the coast of Newfoundland in Canada.

A dramatic search-and-rescue operation is underway by sea, underwater and aerial means. Biggest enemy is time. The five aboard the Titan submarine have less than 40 hours of oxygen remaining, but they are in normal conditions. However, no one knows if they are alive at the moment and this is because no one can yet answer the reasons for the disappearance of the submarine.

There are many scenarios. These include an underwater “explosion” due to water ingress, a short circuit and communication failure, or even being trapped or bumping into the wreckage.

In more detail the worst case scenario – and for some the most likely – is the one that concerns a potential leak in its hull. This, if verified, would mean that the submarine has been destroyed by the enormous water pressure at these depths.

At the same time, the scenario that the submarine “Titan” has been trapped or has collided with the wreckage of the Titanic is being considered. According to the experts, since contact with him was lost after 1 hour and 45 minutes, it is possible that he has reached the depth of the wreck. In the case of impact the worst case scenario is the most likely. But if it is trapped in the wreckage of the Titanic scattered on the bottom of the Atlantic, then it cannot release the weights with which it is equipped and, therefore, create enough buoyancy to bring it back to the surface. At the same time, its detection and its ascent to such a depth are described by experts as very difficult or even impossible operations.

The best case scenario is that it has suffered a communication breakdown or power outage and has already surfaced thanks to the weights. But authorities have already combed an area of ​​76,000 square kilometers, an area larger than the State of Connecticut, and searches have turned up nothing, so far.

As time crunches, the French Institute for Research on the Exploitation of the Seas is sending the Atalante robotic deep-sea ship to reinforce – and in deeper waters – the complex surveys already being conducted by joint US and Canadian forces.

The submarine’s occupants paid almost $250,000 to be guided to the wet grave of the Titanic and now the whole planet is talking about a second shipwreck in the same spot, and while the thriller continues in the North Atlantic operations are like searching for a needle in a haystack.