The Titan submarine, which was carrying five people on board for a sightseeing trip around the Titanic wreckage, has been missing for four days. The search is intensifying as it is now estimated that oxygen has been depleted on board.
While a loss of signal is the cause of the disappearance, a deleted tweet from the company OceanGate, which offers these underwater excursions, has sparked a rumor that Starlink had a hand in the matter. Starlink, owned by Elon Musk’s SpaceX company, is a satellite internet service provider that connects “white” areas to the international grid via low-orbiting satellites.
It all starts on June 8, when the Starlink company tweets about the expedition, which will take place 10 days later.
“Internet from space supports the Titanic expedition,” Starlink’s official account had tweeted, in response to a tweet from OceanGate thanking the company for “an internet connection.”
In addition, on June 14, the OceanGate company tweeted “the wreckage of the Titanic lies approximately 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland [une île canadienne, NDLR]. With no cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we relied on Starlink to provide the communications needed for this year’s Titanic expedition.”
The tweet has since been deleted, but can still be viewed. on the Wayback Machine website, which archives previous versions of web pages. The Titan submarine left on Sunday morning, June 18, four days after this tweet was published.
A complex communication system.
The question then arises: Would Starlink have failed to provide the services necessary for the Titan submarine to communicate with the surface?
According to Stefan Williams, a professor at the University of Sydney who specializes in underwater robotics, this is not the case.
If the ship that communicates with the submarine has indeed used Starlink services to access the Internet in the middle of the ocean, for its own needs, a submarine at this depth cannot rely on such a device.
with the means The conversationthe professor explains that submarines, especially at this depth, use specific communication systems.
Thus, Titan’s communication system uses an acoustic transmission system, which can traverse large areas of salt water (unlike electromagnetic waves). These acoustic transmissions only exchange brief location information between the submarine and its dedicated ship. Impossible, therefore, to use a satellite internet service at such a distance under the ocean.
Source: BFM TV
