The US Coast Guard has revealed seven new assets are on their way to the site in the North Atlantic Ocean to aid in the search for the missing Titanic tourist submarine.
The Coast Guard also revealed that the US Navy is sending expert vessels to aid in the search, with a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS) on its way to the last known location of the missing Titan submersible.
The FADOSS, which is a motion-compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity to recover large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels, will arrive at the search zone in a matter of hours.
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Canadian Coast Guard boat John Cabot arrived on the scene on June 21 to aid in the search by using its sonar capabilities to scour the sea for the missing submarine with its five lost souls on board.
Underwater sounds have been detected in the search area, resulting in the deployment of underwater vessels capable of remote operation should the search turn into a search and rescue effort.
Recordings of 'banging' and 'tapping' sounds have been picked up by several vessels fitted with sonar technology.
The Coast Guard recordings of the sounds were shared with the US Navy for analysis.
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Seven more vessels have been dispatched to the search zone to assist in the massive international effort as rescuers race against time to save those on board the missing submarine.
The additional vessels on their way are Canada's CGS Ann Harvey, CGS Terry Fox, and His Majesty's Canadian Ship Glace Bay, which has a mobile decompression chamber and a team of medical personnel on board.
ROV vessels en route to the site include French Research Vessel L’Atalante, another ROV from Magellan, and the Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic.
OceanGate's Titan submarine was reported missing on June 18 at 5:40 pm local time.
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The 21-foot submersible, launched from the Canadian Research Vessel Polar Prince, vanished with five people on board who were diving to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
The Titanic wreckage lies approximately 900 nautical miles East of Cape Cod.
Those on board are British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding is among the five, along with Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman and OceanGate’s chief executive and founder Stockton Rush, reportedly together with French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The submarine was launched at 8 am local time on June 18.
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It was expected to resurface at 3 pm, but one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the Titan submarine lost contact with the Polar Prince.
Rachel Lang