The friend of a billionaire passenger on board a missing submersible has revealed the last text message they received from him.
Hamish Harding is among the five missing passengers who boarded a tiny submersible to explore the wreck of the Titanic. This is what he told his friend before leaving:
The group paid $250,000 to take part in the exploration, which set sail on Sunday (18 June).
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However, as the submersible made its descent two miles beneath the Atlantic Ocean, it suddenly vanished.
Harding has taken part in a number of otherworldly explorations prior to this trip, visiting Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in the ocean, and boarding a Blue Origin space mission.
And speaking on Good Morning Britain, friend and retired astronaut Colonel Terry Virts shared the last text he received from Harding before he set off.
"We don't really talk about risks, it's known," he said. "He understood the risks for sure, there's no doubt about that.
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"The last text I got was, 'Hey, we're headed out tomorrow, it looks good, the weather's been bad so they've been waiting for this'.
"He went down to the deepest part of the ocean, set a few world records at the Mariana Trench and we talked quite a bit about the risks and the different things that they were going to be able to do.
"So he was very excited about it."
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This comes as US and Canadian teams launched a huge search and rescue mission to find the missing sub, which is operated by OceanGate Expeditions.
The missing vessel lost contact with the research vessel Polar Prince – which is used to transport submersibles to the Titanic wreckage site - one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the US Coast Guard said, with news of the missing vessel breaking on Monday (19 June).
Weighing 23,000 lbs and with the ability to reach depths of up to 13,100 ft, the vessel has 96 hours of life support available for a crew of five.
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The Titan sends a ‘ping’ to the Polar Prince every 15 minutes, however, during Sunday’s mission, the submersible is understood to have lost contact with the Polar Prince – which remains above water on the surface - for at least seven hours.
A source claimed that the Titan was directly above the Titanic wreckage when it last made contact with base at around 10am US time on Sunday.
The wreck of the ship, which sank in 1912, lies some 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s Newfoundland and at a depth of some 12,500 feet (3,800m).
OceanGate, the tour firm running the Titanic mission, released a statement on Monday, in which it said that all options were being explored to rescue the five people onboard.
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As well as Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman are onboard the vessel, as are French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate founder Stockton Rush.
Topics: US News
Dominic Smithers