Titan submersible malfunctioned days prior to the fatal dive, former scientific director testifies
CNN
A former OceanGate scientific director said the Titan submersible suffered a malfunction six days before imploding in June 2023, killing all five people on board.
A former OceanGate scientific director said the Titan submersible suffered a malfunction six days before imploding in June 2023, killing all five people on board. Steven Ross, a marine scientist and crew member of Dive 87 on the Titan’s fourth mission in 2023, testified at a hearing Thursday on the vessel’s tragic implosion that a platform malfunction during that dive caused all five people onboard to slam to the aft of the submersible for at least an hour. The dive was aborted because, upon resurfacing, a platform malfunction caused by an issue with the variable ballast tank, which controlled the submersible’s buoyancy, caused the platform to invert to 45 degrees with the back bow facing upward. The dive, piloted by Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of the vessel’s operator, OceanGate, took place on June 12 about 460 miles from the Titanic site. “The pilot crashed into the rear bulkhead, the rest of the passengers tumbled about, I ended up standing on the rear bulkhead, one passenger was hanging upside down, the other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow endcap,” Ross said, adding that no one was injured. Rush had indicated to the passengers there was a problem with the variable ballast tank valve, Ross said. Because the platform malfunction took considerable time to correct, the dive was aborted and they returned to the surface to fix the issue.
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