The 21-foot submersible and its five-person crew started a dive on Sunday, according to the Coast Guard. Canadian research vessel Polar Prince then lost contact with the submersible after an hour and 45 minutes.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that runs the expeditions, confirmed it is working with government agencies as part of the rescue.

“Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” the company said. “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.”

Along with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard is assisting in the search by providing a P8 Poseidon aircraft with underwater detection capabilities. A C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Coast Guard station in Elizabeth City, N.C., is also being used in the search. The Coast Guard has also deployed sonar buoys to listen for underwater sounds.

“We really brought all assets that we have available to us to bear on finding the submersible and the people in it,” Rear Admiral John Mauger, the commander of the Coast Guard district leading the search, said, via NBC News. “We understand from the operator of the submersible that there is a 96-hour reserve capacity on there, and so that gives us some time to affect a search. But when something happens on the high seas, it gets complicated quickly.”

Submersibles are attached to a mother ship – in this case, the Polar Prince – and have shorter power cycles than submarines, which can travel long distances independently.

NBC News confirmed that one of the missing crew members is Hamish Harding, the owner and chairman of Action Aviation. He said in an Instagram post on Sunday that he was joining the expedition “as a mission specialist.”

It is unclear whether any tourism passengers were on board. The New York Times reported last year that individuals could pay up to $125,000 to join one of OceanGate’s Titanic expeditions.

OceanGate Expeditions said earlier this month that it is using Starlink, a satellite company, to provide the necessary communications for its 2023 Titanic Expedition.

The wreck of the Titanic is around 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and at a depth of around 12,500 feet.

The scan, carried out by Magellan, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, provides a 3D view of the boat. This cutting edge technology challenges a “century’s worth of human interpretation” about what happened to the British passenger liner en route to New York, Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst and historian.

The Titanic has been a historical phenomenon since sinking in 1912, with countless movies and books dedicated to its research. That following sometimes lends itself to conspiracies and anecdotal evidence.

Speaking with NBC News on Wednesday, Stephenson said this scan is a “major step to driving the narrative of the Titanic towards evidence-based, scientific research and not speculation.” 

This is far from the first time the ship has been captured on camera, but what sets this scan apart is the unparalleled quality and scope. Submersive cameras typically only capture small pieces of the wreck, forcing people to try to match them together to create a distorted composite image.

“It will be accurate but you’ll tend to make it more complete than it actually is,” Stephenson said.

Atlantic Productions said the team used photogrammetry — the process of taking overlapping photographs of an object, structure or space, and converting them into 2D or 3D digital models.

This technique removed the element of human interpretation and relied entirely on data.

Among the revelations made in this scan was that officer’s quarters — including Captain Edward Smith’s room — are considered a “major area of deterioration.” Specifically, the captain’s bathtub has disappeared from view.

“Now we’re getting objective, so we can get really serious with the science of understanding the wreck,” Stephenson said. 

The Titanic sunk early on April 15, 1912, five days after departing from Southampton, England. More than 1,500 people died — including about 700 crew members — when the ship struck an iceberg off the eastern coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It currently rests in the Atlantic Ocean, nearly 13,000 feet below the surface.

Stephenson believes the introduction of photogrammetry will extend well beyond the Titanic, or even ship wrecks. Rather, it can be employed for all underwater exploration.