Nautile

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The Nautile.

The Nautile is a manned submersible owned by Ifremer, the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea. Commissioned in 1984, the submersible can be operated at depths of up to 6 km (3.7 miles).

The Nautile is a miniature submarine, based on the bathyscaphe design, and capable of housing just three people. It has a length of 8 m, a width of 2.7 m, and a height of 3.81 m and is constructed largely from a titanium alloy. The Nautile is fitted with two still imaging cameras, two colour video cameras, and a number of flood lights. It is fitted with two robotic arms to allow remote manipulation. The name Nautile is derived from Captain Nemo's submarine Nautilus in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

[edit] Deployments

The Nautile is best known for its use in probing the wreck of the RMS Titanic, capturing images of the sunken vessel in 1998. The Nautile was also used during the cleanup operation following the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the Atlantic coast of Spain in 2002. Also, it was used for a number of connection operations of the ANTARES neutrino telescope.