Days before it imploded while headed to the Titanic wreckage last summer, the Titan submersible endured a malfunction, the company's scientific director testified Thursday. Steven Ross told a US Coast Guard panel that the experimental submersible had a platform problem that caused passengers aboard to "tumble about," the AP reports. The sub crashed into bulkheading, leaving one passenger "hanging upside down" and others hanging on inside, Ross said. Getting the sub out of the water took a support crew more than an hour, per the BBC. No one was injured, he said.
Ross said he didn't know whether a safety assessment of the Titan was conducted after the malfunction, or whether its hull was inspected. The Coast Guard panel has heard testimony for three days so far about OceanGate's operations. A mission specialist testified Thursday that the company's employees were competent. "Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true," said Renata Rojas in emotional testimony that prompted the panel to call a 10-minute break, per ABC News.
Rojas, who was on a support vessel, described seeing the passengers and crew leaving on the doomed trip. "I saw five people smiling on the way to their journey," she said. "They were just happy to go, that's the memory I have." Five people were killed in the deep sea implosion on June 18, 2023. (More Titan stories.)
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