Public and private rescue teams from the United States and Canada continue to try find the missing Titan submarine when I went down to the wreck of the Titanic. The race against time to save its five inhabitants is already desperate as they barely have time for 25 hours of oxygen.

The Titan submersible is a recreational bathyscaphe that takes “excursions” to the remains of the Titanic, which sank in 1012 when it hit an iceberg. Last Sunday he lost contact with the support ship and considering that the maximum oxygen capacity was 96 hours, the situation is critical today. The rescue tasks are very complex both to find the mini-sub and to bring it out and remove its inhabitants.

The depth at which it is located is unknown and this complicates the task. To understand why, you need to see how sonar works. The technician sends a beam of sound waves into the water and looks for an echo. The further away, the more sound waves are refracted by pressure and temperature changes in the water. This makes sonar less accurate at identifying objects as depth decreases.

And if Titan has fallen much, there are few viable alternatives. There is no radar or GPS under the sea. Reflectors or laser beams do not work either, as they are absorbed by the water for several meters. All of this means that rescue teams searching the ocean floor will have to transmit their sonar signals further down to where they think the submarine might be, either by adding submarines to the search or by running sonar devices using cables.

Remember that the wreckage of the Titanic lies at a depth of around 3,800 meters and sonar systems that capture acoustic images of the seabed only work effectively at half that depth. The search area is also extensive despite the support ship accompanying the submarine, as the Titanic wreck itself can be a false positive and the sea currents are very strong in the area.

In recent hours, information has spread that the Titan submarine is using a cheap video game controller, specifically Logitech’s Logitech GamePad F710. The use of these modified controllers is not new, and for example the US Navy uses an Xbox 360 controller to control the periscopes of some of its ships. Using a cheap game controller doesn’t seem to be causing the crash, though it’s curious. It should be said that the device is not approved or certified by any authority and is considered “experimental”.

We’ll see if it can restore the facility and especially its inhabitants. One thing leads to another as it can only be opened from the outside. And that they can arrive in time because tomorrow they will run out of oxygen. Some say that the famous British ocean liner Titanic was born “cursed” and will continue to claim victims.