OceanGate, the company behind thefailed Titan expedition to the Titanic last month, said on its website it is suspending all exploration and commercial operations.
The announcement comes two weeks after Canadian and American officials confirmed the loss of the Titan submersible, which likely imploded on its way to visit the Titanic shipwreck. Five people on board Titan died, including the company's CEO, Stockton Rush.
"Our founder’s dream of exploring distant planets changed when he realized that it is not necessary to go to space to discover alien worlds; our planet’s ocean is filled with them," the company said on its website.
Titan was one of the company's two main submersibles. Canadian officials recovered debris from Titan and returned it to port last week.
Prior to the incident, OceanGate was accused by a contractor in 2018 of not addressing concerns over the sub's safety designs.
Where's the empathy? Experts explain why sub disaster led to jokes
Many mocked the crushed Titan submersible after learning the passengers paid an exorbitant amount of money to get on board.
The safety concerns were submitted in a wrongful termination countersuit filed in federal court. The lawsuits were filed before Titan was completed, and the case was settled out of court.
Titan was only rated to carry passengers to depths of 1,300 meters, not 4,000 meters like promised, the suit states. In order to reach the Titanic shipwreck, a submersible would have to go over 3,800 meters below the ocean surface.
According to OceanGate, Titan was the first deep-sea submersible to be built using carbon fiber.
