PARIS, June 21 (Reuters) - A French robot that can dive to 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) underwater is on its way to help find a tourist submersible that vanished as it descended to the Titanic wreck and it could help free the sub if it is trapped, its operator said on Wednesday.
"Victor is not capable of lifting the submarine up on its own," said Olivier Lefort, the head of naval operations at Ifremer, the state-run French ocean research institute which operates the robot.
But he told Reuters the robot could help hook the 10-tonne submersible called Titan to a ship with the capacity to lift it to the surface.
Ifremer was part of the team that located the wreck of the Titanic in 1985 with American underwater archaeologist Robert Ballard.
French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, who is reported to be among the five people inside the missing submersible, previously worked at Ifremer and piloted its flagship Nautile submarine that was used to examine the Titanic wreck.
Persons:
Victor, Olivier Lefort, Ifremer, Robert Ballard ., Paul, Henri Nargeolet, Lefort, Michel Rose, Edmund Blair
Organizations:
Reuters, British, U.S . Navy, U.S . Coast Guard, Canadian, Thomson
Locations:
Ifremer, Robert Ballard . French, U.S