On February 26, OceanGate, a deep-sea exploration company in the United States, announced that it has signed a cooperation agreement with NASA to jointly develop carbon fiber high-pressure shells that can withstand deep-sea high-pressure environments and cosmic vacuum environments.
NASA will use its Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama as the R & D and production base for the aviation-grade carbon fiber high-pressure shell.
OceanGate said that the signing of the contract is of crucial significance for the company to build 5 submarines with a dive depth of up to 6 kilometers. According to the current time schedule, the submarine will officially enter service in 2021 and dive to the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean at a depth of 3,810 meters to carry out the mission of detecting the Titanic wreckage.
"In recent years, we have continued to receive more and more market demands related to deep-sea research, prospecting, and environmental monitoring. However, submarines with the ability to perform the above tasks are rare." OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said, "NASA has Advanced composite material manufacturing technology and experience are ideal partners for the company to achieve high-quality high-pressure submarine shell design. "Rush also stated that OceanGate will pay NASA service fees for this.
For NASA, because it has been seeking a new generation of high-pressure resistant spacecraft and human space habitat manufacturing methods, it will also benefit from this cooperation.
"NASA has always been committed to the research and development of cutting-edge composite materials technology. This will not only promote the process of human exploration of outer space, but also generally enhance the awareness and application of the United States in the field of materials." Said John Vickers, chief scientist of NASA advanced manufacturing technology, This cooperation with OceanGate is an excellent example of our implementation of the civilization strategy of aerospace technology. "
In the past few years, OceanGate has spent millions of dollars to build a submarine called Titan with a carbon fiber shell, hoping to help humans discover the secrets of the Titanic that has been sleeping on the seabed. However, the Titan's shell revealed many signs of fatigue during the test, unable to reach the depth required by the mission, and eventually lost it.
In January 2020, OceanGate announced that it will raise funds of USD 18.1 million again to rebuild two new 6km deep sea submarines.