OceanGate’s Titan Sub Relied on Manually Entered Excel Data

A former OceanGate contractor, Antonella Wilby, testified before a U.S. Coast Guard panel on Friday regarding the navigation system employed by the company’s Titan submarine, which imploded last year during a dive to the Titanic’s wreckage.

Wilby detailed during the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation hearing that the Titan used a GPS-like ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system. This system was designed to generate data on the sub’s velocity, depth, and position through sound pings.

Ordinarily, such information would be automatically loaded into mapping software to monitor a sub’s position. However, Wilby explained that for the Titan, the coordinate data was manually transcribed into a notebook, entered into an Excel spreadsheet, and then loaded into mapping software to track the sub’s position on a hand-drawn map of the wreckage.

The OceanGate team endeavored to update the navigation data at least every five minutes, but the process was slow and manual. They communicated with the gamepad-controlled sub through short text messages. Wilby suggested using standard software to process ping data and automatically plot the sub’s telemetry; however, the company preferred developing an in-house system but lacked the time to do so.

Following her recommendation, Wilby was removed from the team after telling her supervisors that the navigation method was inefficient. She also testified that during Dive 80 in 2022, a loud bang or explosion was heard during the Titan’s ascent, a sound that was audible from the surface.

This testimony aligns with previous statements from OceanGate’s former scientific director, Steven Ross. Like Wilby, Ross attributed the sound to a shifting of the pressure hull in its plastic cradle, although Wilby noted that only minimal damage occurred.

Ross also recounted an incident six days before the Titan submarine imploded. The sub’s pilot and the company’s co-founder, Stockton Rush, collided with a launch mechanism bulkhead while attempting to resurface from Dive 87. A malfunction with a ballast tank caused the submarine to invert, leading to other passengers being jostled, as reported by the Associated Press. There were no injuries, but Ross was uncertain if an inspection of the sub was conducted afterward.

Source link