OceanGate has announced a new partnership with NASA to develop, manufacture and test all-new carbon fibre pressure vessels
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama will be the development and manufacturing headquarters for the new aerospace-grade hull which will be key to completing the Company’s latest Cyclops-class submersible.
NASA’s advanced composite manufacturing capability is ideally suited for the high precision and high-quality requirements of our latest hull design
OceanGate CEO & Founder, Stockton Rush
The company are hoping that this joint design agreement with NASA will further the development of its five-person submarine capable of reaching 19,700 feet. It’s hoped that the new submersible would be operational by 2021 and take on a series of dives to the wreck of the Titanic which lies at a depth of 12,500 feet in the North Atlantic.
Over the last few years, OceanGate has been developing its Titan submersible, made from a mixture of carbon fibre and titanium. The filament wound cylinder that forms the centre section of the pressure vessel is nearly 13 cm thick and made from over 800 layers of carbon fibre composites. The entire pressure vessel consists of two titanium hemispheres, two matching titanium interface rings, and the 142 cm internal diameter, 2.4 metres long carbon fibre wound cylinder, the largest such device ever built for use in a manned submersible.
In April 2019 OceanGate crew sets a world record with Titan as the first four-person dive to 12,300 feet.