Res­cuers in a re­mote area of the At­lantic Ocean raced against time ear­ly Tues­day to find a miss­ing sub­mersible car­ry­ing five peo­ple on a mis­sion to doc­u­ment the wreck­age of the Ti­tan­ic.

The car­bon-fiber sub­mersible named the Ti­tan, part of a mis­sion by Ocean­Gate Ex­pe­di­tions, car­ried a pi­lot, a renowned British ad­ven­tur­er, two mem­bers of an icon­ic Pak­istani busi­ness fam­i­ly and a Ti­tan­ic ex­pert. Au­thor­i­ties re­port­ed the ves­sel over­due Sun­day night about 435 miles (700 kilo­me­ters) south of St. John’s, New­found­land, ac­cord­ing to Cana­da’s Joint Res­cue Co­or­di­na­tion Cen­ter.

Every pass­ing minute, how­ev­er, puts the Ti­tan’s crew at greater risk. The sub­mersible had a 96-hour oxy­gen sup­ply when it put to sea at rough­ly 6 a.m. Sun­day, ac­cord­ing to David Con­can­non, an ad­vis­er to Ocean­Gate.

“It is a re­mote area — and it is a chal­lenge to con­duct a search in that re­mote area,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, a com­man­der for the U.S. Coast Guard, which al­so is search­ing for the Ti­tan.

Mauger told NBC’s “To­day” show on Tues­day that his crews were work­ing to pri­or­i­tize un­der­wa­ter search ef­forts and get equip­ment there that can be help­ful to the search.

“We’re work­ing very, very hard to make sure that we bring all as­sets ... to bring lead­ing tech­ni­cal ex­perts to un­der­stand what ca­pa­bil­i­ty is avail­able, what ca­pa­bil­i­ty we can get to the team,” he said.

The Cana­di­an re­search ice­break­er Po­lar Prince, which was sup­port­ing the Ti­tan, re­port­ed­ly lost con­tact with the ves­sel about an hour and 45 min­utes af­ter it sub­merged. The Po­lar Prince was to con­tin­ue to do sur­face search­es through­out the night and a Cana­di­an Boe­ing P-8 Po­sei­don re­con­nais­sance air­craft will re­sume their sur­face and sub­sur­face search in the morn­ing, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Twit­ter.

Two U.S. Lock­heed C-130 Her­cules air­craft al­so have con­duct­ed over­flights.

The Cana­di­an mil­i­tary al­so dropped sonar buoys to lis­ten for any pos­si­ble sounds from the Ti­tan.

Ship-track­ing satel­lite da­ta from Marine­Traf­fic.com an­a­lyzed by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press showed the Po­lar Prince some 430 miles (690 kilo­me­ters) south­east of St. John’s on Tues­day morn­ing. The Ba­hamas-flagged ca­ble lay­er Deep En­er­gy was near­by as well, like­ly as­sist­ing in the sur­face search.

In an ear­li­er email to the AP, Con­can­non said he was sup­posed to be on the dive but could not go. He said of­fi­cials were work­ing to get a re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed ve­hi­cle that can reach a depth of 3.7 miles (6 kilo­me­ters) to the site as soon as pos­si­ble.

Ocean­Gate’s ex­pe­di­tions to the Ti­tan­ic wreck site in­clude ar­chae­ol­o­gists and ma­rine bi­ol­o­gists. The com­pa­ny al­so brings peo­ple who pay to come along, known as “mis­sion spe­cial­ists.” They take turns op­er­at­ing sonar equip­ment and per­form­ing oth­er tasks in the five-per­son sub­mersible.

The Coast Guard said Mon­day that there was one pi­lot and four “mis­sion spe­cial­ists” aboard. How­ev­er, Ocean­Gate’s web­site sug­gests that the fifth per­son aboard may be a so-called “con­tent ex­pert” who guides the pay­ing cus­tomers.

Ocean­Gate said its fo­cus was on those aboard and their fam­i­lies.

“We are deeply thank­ful for the ex­ten­sive as­sis­tance we have re­ceived from sev­er­al gov­ern­ment agen­cies and deep sea com­pa­nies in our ef­forts to reestab­lish con­tact with the sub­mersible,” it said in a state­ment.

Au­thor­i­ties have yet to for­mal­ly iden­ti­fy those on board, though some names have been con­firmed.

British busi­ness­man Hamish Hard­ing, who lives in Dubai in the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, was one of the mis­sion spe­cial­ists, ac­cord­ing to Ac­tion Avi­a­tion, a com­pa­ny for which Hard­ing serves as chair­man. The com­pa­ny’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Mark But­ler, told the AP that the crew set out on Fri­day.

“There is still plen­ty of time to fa­cil­i­tate a res­cue mis­sion, there is equip­ment on board for sur­vival in this event,” But­ler said. “We’re all hop­ing and pray­ing he comes back safe and sound.”

Hard­ing is a bil­lion­aire ad­ven­tur­er who holds three Guin­ness World Records, in­clud­ing the longest du­ra­tion at full ocean depth by a crewed ves­sel. In March 2021, he and ocean ex­plor­er Vic­tor Vesco­vo dived to the low­est depth of the Mar­i­ana Trench. In June 2022, he went in­to space on Blue Ori­gin’s New Shep­ard rock­et.

Hard­ing was “look­ing for­ward to con­duct­ing re­search” at the Ti­tan­ic site, said Richard Gar­riott de Cayeux, the pres­i­dent of The Ex­plor­ers Club, a group to which Hard­ing be­longed.

“We all join in the fer­vent hope that the sub­mersible is lo­cat­ed as quick­ly as pos­si­ble,” he said in a state­ment.

Al­so on board were Pak­istani na­tion­als Shahza­da Da­wood and his son Sule­man, ac­cord­ing to a fam­i­ly state­ment sent to the AP. The Da­woods be­long to one of Pak­istan’s most promi­nent fam­i­lies. Their epony­mous firm in­vests across the coun­try in agri­cul­ture, in­dus­tries and the health sec­tor.

“We are very grate­ful for the con­cern be­ing shown by our col­leagues and friends and would like to re­quest every­one to pray for their safe­ty while grant­i­ng the fam­i­ly pri­va­cy at this time,” the state­ment said. “The fam­i­ly is well looked af­ter and are pray­ing to Al­lah for the safe re­turn of their fam­i­ly mem­bers.”

Shahza­da Da­wood al­so is on the board of trustees for the Cal­i­for­nia-based SETI In­sti­tute that search­es for ex­trater­res­tri­al in­tel­li­gence.

French ex­plor­er and Ti­tan­ic ex­pert Paul-Hen­ry Nar­ge­o­let al­so was on board, ac­cord­ing to David Gal­lo, a se­nior ad­vis­er for strate­gic ini­tia­tives and spe­cial projects at RMS Ti­tan­ic. Gal­lo iden­ti­fied Nar­ge­o­let, a friend who has led mul­ti­ple ex­pe­di­tions to the Ti­tan­ic, on Tues­day dur­ing an in­ter­view with CNN.

The ex­pe­di­tion was Ocean­Gate’s third an­nu­al voy­age to chron­i­cle the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of Ti­tan­ic, which struck an ice­berg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the rough­ly 2,200 pas­sen­gers and crew. Since the wreck­age’s dis­cov­ery in 1985, it has been slow­ly suc­cumb­ing to met­al-eat­ing bac­te­ria. Some have pre­dict­ed the ship could van­ish in a mat­ter of decades as holes yawn in the hull and sec­tions dis­in­te­grate.

The ini­tial group of tourists in 2021 paid $100,000 to $150,000 apiece to go on the trip. Ocean­Gate’s web­site had de­scribed the “mis­sion sup­port fee” for the 2023 ex­pe­di­tion as $250,000 a per­son.

Un­like sub­marines that leave and re­turn to port un­der their own pow­er, sub­mersibles re­quire a ship to launch and re­cov­er them. Ocean­Gate hired the Po­lar Prince to fer­ry dozens of peo­ple and the sub­mersible craft to the North At­lantic wreck site. The sub­mersible would make mul­ti­ple dives in one ex­pe­di­tion.

The ex­pe­di­tion was sched­uled to de­part from St. John’s, New­found­land, in ear­ly May and fin­ish up at the end of June, ac­cord­ing to doc­u­ments filed by the com­pa­ny in April with a U.S. Dis­trict Court in Vir­ginia that over­sees Ti­tan­ic mat­ters.

CBS jour­nal­ist David Pogue, who went on the trip last year, not­ed his ves­sel got turned around look­ing for the Ti­tan­ic.

“There’s no GPS un­der­wa­ter, so the sur­face ship is sup­posed to guide the sub to the ship­wreck by send­ing text mes­sages,” Pogue said in a seg­ment aired on CBS Sun­day Morn­ing. “But on this dive, com­mu­ni­ca­tions some­how broke down. The sub nev­er found the wreck.”

The sub­mersible, named Ti­tan, is ca­pa­ble of div­ing 2.4 miles (4 kilo­me­ters) “with a com­fort­able safe­ty mar­gin,” Ocean­Gate said in its court fil­ing.

It weighs 20,000 pounds (9,072 kilo­grams) in the air, but is bal­last­ed to be neu­tral­ly buoy­ant once it reach­es the seafloor, the com­pa­ny said.

In a May 2021 court fil­ing, Ocean­Gate said the Ti­tan had an “un­par­al­leled safe­ty fea­ture” that as­sess­es the in­tegri­ty of the hull through­out every dive.

Dur­ing its ex­pe­di­tion in 2022, Ocean­Gate re­port­ed that the sub­mersible had a bat­tery is­sue on its first dive, and had to be man­u­al­ly at­tached to its lift­ing plat­form, ac­cord­ing to a No­vem­ber court fil­ing. More mis­sions, how­ev­er, fol­lowed. Ocean­Gate has de­scribed the sub­mersible as a “state-of-the-art ves­sel” that “is lighter, more spa­cious and more com­fort­able than any oth­er deep-div­ing sub­mersible ex­plor­ing the ocean to­day.”

But the cus­tom-built, ti­ta­ni­um-domed Ti­tan rep­re­sent­ed a risk. Pogue and an­oth­er pas­sen­ger, a writer and pro­duc­er for the car­toon se­ries “The Simp­sons” named Mike Reiss, not­ed how the li­a­bil­i­ty waiv­er for the trip in­clud­ed stark safe­ty warn­ings. Pogue in his CBS piece al­so high­light­ed how much of the “im­pro­vised” sub­mersible, about the size of a mini­van, op­er­at­ed with a sin­gle but­ton, a video game-style con­troller, a makeshift toi­let and ma­te­r­i­al from an RV re­tail­er.

Ex­perts said Mon­day that res­cuers face steep chal­lenges.

Al­is­tair Greig, a pro­fes­sor of ma­rine en­gi­neer­ing at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, said sub­mersibles typ­i­cal­ly have a drop weight, which is “a mass they can re­lease in the case of an emer­gency to bring them up to the sur­face us­ing buoy­an­cy.”

“If there was a pow­er fail­ure and/or com­mu­ni­ca­tion fail­ure, this might have hap­pened, and the sub­mersible would then be bob­bing about on the sur­face wait­ing to be found,” Greig said.

An­oth­er sce­nario is a leak in the pres­sure hull, in which case the prog­no­sis is not good, he said.

“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up un­der its own pow­er, op­tions are very lim­it­ed,” Greig said. “While the sub­mersible might still be in­tact, if it is be­yond the con­ti­nen­tal shelf, there are very few ves­sels that can get that deep, and cer­tain­ly not divers.”

Even if they could go that deep, he doubts they could at­tach to the hatch of Ocean­Gate’s sub­mersible.

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As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Dan­i­ca Kir­ka, Jill Law­less and Sylvia Hui in Lon­don, Robert Gillies in Toron­to, Ol­ga R. Ro­driguez in San Fran­cis­co, Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, and Mu­nir Ahmed in Is­lam­abad con­tributed to this re­port.