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NASA Downplays Role in Development of Titan Submersible that Imploded

(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
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NASA Downplays Role in Development of Titan Submersible that Imploded

(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush said the carbon fiber hull used in an experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic was developed with help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers, but a NASA official testified Thursday that the space agency actually had little involvement at all.
OceanGate and NASA partnered in 2020 with NASA planning to play a role in building and testing the carbon fiber hull. But the COVID-19 pandemic prevented NASA from fulfilling its role, other than providing some consulting on an early mockup, not the ultimate carbon fiber hull that was used for people, said Justin Jackson, a materials engineer for NASA.
“We provided remote consultations throughout the build of their one third scale article, but we did not do any manufacturing or testing of their cylinders,” The Associated Press quoted Jackson as saying.
At one point, Jackson said NASA declined to allow its name to be invoked in a news release by OceanGate. “The language they were using was getting too close to us endorsing, so our folks had some heartburn with the endorsement level of it,” he told a Coast Guard panel that’s investigating the tragedy.
Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023. The design of the company's Titan submersible has been the source of scrutiny since the disaster.
The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.
In addition to Jackson, Thursday's testimony was to include Mark Negley of Boeing Co.; John Winters of Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound; and Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Duffett of the Coast Guard Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance.
Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include more witnesses.
The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans. Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” Sohnlein said.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

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Animals Found Living Underground Near Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents

Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
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Animals Found Living Underground Near Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vents

Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS
Giant tubeworms on the seafloor surface at 2,500 meters water depth at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge located where two tectonic plates meet on the floor of the Pacific Ocean in this undated photograph.CC BY-NC-SA Schmidt Ocean Institute/Handout via REUTERS

A deep-diving robot that chiseled into the rocky Pacific seabed at a spot where two of the immense plates comprising Earth's outer shell meet has unearthed a previously unknown realm of animal life thriving underground near hydrothermal vents.

Giant tubeworms - the world's heftiest worms - and other marine invertebrates such as snails and bristle worms were found using the remotely operated underwater vehicle SuBastian. They were living inside cavities within the Earth's crust at an ocean-floor site where the Pacific is 1.56 miles (2,515 meters) deep. All the species were previously known to have lived near such vents, but never underground, Reuters reported.

"We discovered vent animal life in the cavities of the ocean's crust. We now know that the unique hydrothermal vent ecosystem extends into the ocean's crust," said marine biologist Sabine Gollner of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, one of the leaders of the study published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

"To our knowledge, it is the first time that animal life has been discovered in the ocean crust," Gollner added.

The exploration was conducted at the East Pacific Rise, a volcanically active ridge on the floor of the southeastern Pacific, running approximately parallel to South America's west coast. Earth's rigid outer part is divided into colossal plates that move gradually over time in a process called plate tectonics. The East Pacific Rise is located where two such plates are gradually spreading apart.

This area contains many hydrothermal vents, fissures in the seafloor situated where seawater and magma beneath the Earth's crust come together. Magma refers to molten rock that is underground, while lava refers to molten rock that reaches the surface, including the seafloor. New seafloor forms in places where magma is forced upward toward the surface at a mid-ocean ridge and cools to form volcanic rock.

The hydrothermal vents spew into the cold sea the super-heated and chemical-rich water that nourishes microorganisms.

"The warm venting fluids are rich in energy - for example, sulfide - that can be used by microbes, which form the basis of the food-chain," Gollner said.

Life flourishes around the vents - including giant tubeworms reaching lengths of 10 feet (3 meters), mussels, crabs, shrimp, fish and other organisms beautifully adapted to this extreme environment. The giant tubeworms do not eat as other animals do. Instead, bacteria residing in their body in a sack-like organ turn sulfur from the water into energy for the animal.

The researchers deployed SuBastian from the Schmidt Ocean Institute research vessel Falkortoo to the vent site deep below. The robot was equipped with arms that wielded a chisel that the researchers used to dig into the crust and uncover warm and fluid-filled cavities where the tubeworms, bristle worms and snails were spotted.

"We used a chisel to break the rock. We dug about 20 cm (8 inches). The lava plates were about 10 cm (4 inches) thick. The cavities below the lava plates were about 10 cm in height," Gollner said.

Larvae from these animals may invade these subseafloor habitats, the researchers said, in an example of connectivity between the seafloor and underground ecosystems.

"It changed our view on connectedness in the ocean," Gollner said of discovering the subsurface lair.