Deep-sea robots will continue to search the sea floor for clues about what happened to the Titan submersible that imploded deep in the North Atlantic, killing all five people on board.
The Titan, owned by undersea exploration company OceanGate Expeditions, had been chronicling the Titanic shipwreck's decay and the underwater ecosystem around the sunken ocean liner in yearly voyages since 2021.
Many questions about what occurred underwater remain.
Here's what we do know so far:
WHEN AND WHERE DID THE TITAN GO MISSING?
* The craft submerged Sunday morning and its support vessel lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later
* The vessel was reported overdue about 700km south of St John's, Newfoundland
* The Titan was launched from a former Canadian coast guard icebreaker hired by OceanGate that has ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan has made multiple dives
WHAT HAPPENED ABOARD THE TITAN?
* The vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing all five aboard, sometime this week after it submerged Sunday morning
* It's not clear exactly when or where the implosion occurred
* A senior military official said on Thursday a US Navy acoustic system detected an "anomaly" on Sunday that was likely the Titan's fatal implosion
* Coast guard announced debris from the submersible had been found and rescue efforts had ended on Thursday
* "The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," coast guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said
* A deep-sea robot discovered the debris, near the Titanic shipwreck, that authorities said came from the submersible
* The senior military official said the navy went back and analysed its acoustic data after the Titan was reported missing and that anomaly was "consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost"
* The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system
* The navy passed on the information to the coast guard, which continued its search because the navy did not consider the data definitive
WHAT'S NEXT?
* The coast guard will continue searching near the Titanic for more clues about what happened to the Titan
* Efforts to recover the submersible and the remains of the five men who were on board also continue
WHO WAS KILLED?
* The victims are OceanGate chief executive and Titan pilot Stockton Rush; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet
* "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," OceanGate said in a statement
© AP 2023