Titan submersible’s $62 SanDisk memory card found undamaged at wreckage site

Summary

Recovery teams working on the Titan submersible have found the vessel's specialist stills and video camera intact. Fascinatingly, while there was some damage to the camera’s housing and internal components, tech and science enthusiast Scott Manley reveals that the internal SD card was “undamaged.” Contents of the memory card have since been investigated, and 12 stills and nine videos have been recovered.Click 'See more' for images.In the images, you can see a SubC-branded Rayfin Mk2 Benthic Camera, recovered from the wreckage of the ill-fated submersible operated by OceanGate. This still and video camera is rated to withstand depths up to 6,000m (19,685 feet, 3,281 fathoms). The titanium and synthetic sapphire crystal constructed device features both onboard and expansion memory (the titular SD card).(Image credit: Scott Manley, David Case at the NTSB)Casing intact, lens shattered but remained in placeInside the camera's tube-like form, it is observed that the PCBs had suffered some slight damage. For example, connectors between two boards were sheared off, and some surface mount components were similarly damaged.In some images of the PCB that are shared, you will notice details are blurred at the request of the Canada-based underwater imaging specialist and Rayfin Mk2 Benthic Camera manufacturer. However, SubC’s requested trade secret obfuscation hasn’t stopped internet sleuths asserting that they know exactly what components have been redacted.Picking through Manley's Tweet thread replies, the key PCBs in the camera were likely an Inforce 6601 System on Module (SoM) based on the Qualcomm SD820 processor, which comes with 4GB of RAM on board and 64GB of UFS storage. Another component is thought to be the Teensy 4.0 or 3.2, which acted as an MCU. Last but not least, the undamaged SD card is almost certainly a SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB ($62.99 at the time of writing), though it was de-branded in the photos.Data recovery process and resultsWith an undamaged SD card, o...