The first submarine was built by Dutch engineer Cornelis Drebbel in 1620, but it stuck to shallow waters. The challenging process requires a very narrow beam with a high frequency to offer a clear picture of where objects might be. In the days before the submersible’s likely implosion was confirmed, search and rescue teams relied on sonar, a technique that uses sound waves to explore the opaque depths of the ocean, to attempt to pinpoint the vehicle in case it had been stranded on the seafloor. Jamie Pringle, a reader in forensic geoscience at England’s Keele University, in a statement. “Aquatic search is pretty tricky, as the ocean floor is a lot more rugged than on land,” said Dr. Many of the factors that made the multiday search for the vessel so difficult are also the reasons a comprehensive exploration of the ocean floor remains elusive. The disaster could have occurred during the submersible’s descent, as pressure on the vehicle grew. The US Navy later revealed that it had detected a sound on Sunday that would match an implosion, indicating the vessel, called the Titan, was rapidly destroyed. Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a private company based in Washington state, the tourist vessel lost contact with its mother ship after departing on Sunday. The remnants of the ship lie about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and about 12,500 feet (3,800 meters) underwater. The submersible, which is believed to have been destroyed in a catastrophic implosion, killing all five people aboard, was en route to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. The environment is dark with almost no visibility. There’s a reason deep-sea exploration by humans has been so limited: Traveling to the ocean’s depths means entering a realm with enormous levels of pressure the farther you descend - a high-risk endeavor. Gene Feldman, an oceanographer emeritus at NASA who spent more than 30 years at the space agency. In fact, “we have better maps of the moon and Mars than we do of our own planet,” said Dr. While 12 astronauts have spent a collective total of 300 hours on the lunar surface, only three people have spent around three hours exploring Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of Earth’s seabed, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Researchers often say that traveling to space is easier than plunging to the bottom of the ocean. Though people have been exploring the ocean’s surface for tens of thousands of years, only about 20% of the seafloor has been mapped, according to 2022 figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The submersible vehicle that was lost at sea is part of a relatively new effort enabling tourists and other paying customers to explore the depths of the ocean, the vast majority of which has never been seen by human eyes.
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