A mission to map out the debris field of the Titan submersible around the Titanic wreckage is beginning, a spokesperson for Pelagic Research Services told CNN.

On Friday morning the ROV (remotely operated vehicle) the Odysseus 6 went down to the wreckage and began mapping out the site.

The spokesperson, Jeff Mahoney, told CNN that any attempts to recover the debris will be a larger operation that will require machinery that can lift the Titan debris.

Mr Mahoney said he expects to be on site for another week.

The US Navy was not able to connect the acoustic data retrieved during the search and rescue mission for the Titan submersible to the watercraft, John Kirby said during the White House Press Briefing on Friday (23 June.)

Mr Kirby, the coordinator for strategic communications at the National Security Council told reporters that the US Navy did give their analysis of the acoustic data but were unable to tie it to the submersible.

“They did pass that information up to the incident commander, as you would expect they would, and I’m sure that that was factored into the search plan in some way,” Mr Kirby said.

When asked if the search was “a waste” of time, Mr Kirby definitively said “No.”

He added: “I think you can see from the way in which this wasp ut together in a pretty quick fashion with a lot of resources from, as Karine mentioned, multiple countries, that there was a tremendous effort put forward to try to find the Titan as quickly as possible knowing that time was not going to be anybody’s friend.”

In a series of stunning interviews on Thursday, James Cameron revealed he knew highly sensitive details about the Titan submersible search and rescue mission days before it was released publicly.

Cameron was aware that top secret US Navy listening devices had detected an implosion near the Titanic wreckage within an hour of it occurring on Monday, and has since described the search for the five crew members as a “nightmarish charade”.

He has also claimed that the Titan crew would have known that the submersible’s hull had started to crack and were trying to resurface when the “catastrophic implosion” occurred

Bevan Hurley reports:

The search and rescue mission to find the missing Titan submersible in the North Atlantic Ocean ended on Thursday (22 June) after the US Coast Guard determined the sub imploded, killing the five passengers aboard.

Now the mission could switch to recovery efforts – though the Coast Guard said it would be extremely difficult to search the bottom of the sea floor.

Chris Boyer, the executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue, told The New York Times that the search and rescue mission likely already cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

The Coast Guard does not charge people for search and rescue because it could deter people from seeking lifesaving help.

American singer-songwriter King Princess has weighed in on the OceanGate Expeditions submersible catastrophe.

The musician, 24, real name Mikaela Mullaney Straus, shared a now-deleted TikTok video in which she criticised “billionaires” for exploring things just because “they had the money to”. Her remarks were made one day after it was confirmed that the five passengers onboard the Titan submersible had died after the craft imploded.

The “1950” singer is the great-great-granddaughter of Isodor and Idea Straus, who were first-class passengers on the Titanic and died when the ship sank. Isodor was the co-owner of American department store Macy’s with his brother Nathan. He also served a short term as a member of the United States House of Representatives before he died.

Ellie Muir reports:

Barack Obama has called out the current obsession with the doomed Titanic tourist sub at a time when people are turning a blind eye to the deaths of hundreds of migrants when a fishing boat sank off the coast of Greece.

Speaking at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation conference in Athens on Thursday, the former US president pointed out the overwhelming difference in attention the two cases have gotten this week.

Rachel Sharp reports:

Lord West, the former First Sea Lord shared his thoughts and insights into the search and rescue efforts for the five people aboard the missing submersible, as well as paid tribute to their lives.

“It’s desperately sad this has happened – a horrible loss of these people,” Lord West said.

He mentioned that “one always goes flat out” in missions where there is a hope of saving lives and said a mission like this would have come with a great price tag.

“Nothing is cheap at those depths,” Lord West said adding that equipment alone would cost hundreds of millions of pounds.

But despite that he believes it was right to keep searching for the five men in the hopes they were alive, especially after the US Coast Guard said there were underwater noises.

“With underwater sounds, you can never be completely certain. It was probably right to keep looking – while there was still the possibility they could be alive, you would keep searching.”

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, seems to have dismissed safety concerns about the structural integrity of the Titan submersible before the tragic incident occurred.

In an email exchange seen by the BBC, a deep sea exploration specialist told Mr Rush that he was, “potentially placing” himself and his clients “in a dangerous dynamic.”

The deep sea exploration specialist, Rob McCallum, implored Mr Rush to have the submersible “classed, tested and proven” before using it for commercial operations.

However, Mr Rush insisted people in the industry were using “safety arguments to stop innovation.”

Mr McCallum told BBC he was nervous about the use of carbon fibre on the sub.

“Carbon fibre is not an acceptable material,” Mr McCallum told BBC.

In a July 2021 interview, Mr Rush seemingly revealed he ‘bent rules’ in constructing the Titan by using carbon fibre.

“I have broken some rules to make this. The carbon fibre and titanium... there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did,” Mr Rush says.

A desperate search for the missing Titanic submersible came to a tragic end when debris was discovered deep in the ocean. But, we still don’t know many crucial aspects of the doomed voyage.

The Independent reports: