Renata Rojas is speaking about the day the Titan submersible imploded. She was aboard the support vessel on the surface at the time.

Rojas speaks about how things were "working very smoothly" on the deck before the submarine began its dive.

She says she was asked to perform a series of tasks, including holding the bags that held the divers' belongings.

Rojas then gets emotional about the passengers, saying “they were just happy to go, that’s the memory I have”.

She then says they went up on the bridge of the support ship when it appeared something might have gone wrong.

She recalls thinking, “we haven't heard from them, where are they?"

"They were very close to the Titanic."

Back to the hearing, and Renata Rojas says she was the "platform assistant" on the day of the fatal dive to the Titanic submarine.

"I was mostly standing around until somebody needed help," she adds.

Describing the demeanour of the passengers and pilots in the lead up to the dive towards Titanic:

"I saw five people smiling on the way to their journey," Rojas recalls. "Excited. We had wonderful weather."

We're waiting for the hearing to resume after another short break.

When it does, witness Renata Rojas will continue with her testimony.

As a reminder, we also have a live stream of the hearing at the top of this page.

Rojas says she never heard any noises during another previous dive, describing - "you could hear a pin drop".

"I found them to be very transparent about everything," she adds talking about staff debriefs from OceanGate.

"Anybody could ask any questions. And if you ask questions like, 'I want to see the monitoring system for these dives'.

"You felt safe going down to the Titanic after that incident.

"I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation."

Rojas continues her testimony recalling experiences from a 2022 dive.

Discussing solutions to an issue where the sub was not moving, she said they talked about "alt + ctrl + delete" but adds "that could have created some issues". That's a keyboard command commonly used on computers to restart a broken programme.

"So somebody suggested try to remove the control backwards," she continues.

"Scott, who was our pilot, did wonderfully at that. We landed 300m away from the bow, we could already see debris when we landed.

"Questions inside the sub [were] said 'did you want to go up' and we all said 'we're going we are really close'."

After exploring, she described lights flickering as they were coming up to the surface.

As the sub was parked it lost its remaining battery life, she adds.

Mission specialist Renata Rojas has described the dome coming off during a dive, as she continues giving her testimony.

“You're supposed to gently be placed on the ship. And they didn't do that," she said.

"They literally just let it go. Fell. It was a loud bump, but obviously the forces in the front of the platform or the sub opposite forces shear the clamp and the dome being as heavy as it is, without the dolly that holds it on top, on the bottom, it broke vacuum.

"There was only, I think, two bolts or four bolts on the dome.”

After a short break, the hearing is back on.

Witness Renata Rojas is talking about some of her experiences with OceanGate.

You can watch the hearing live at the top of this page.

Richard Gray
Editor, BBC Future

Image source, Reuters

The wreck of the Titanic lies in total darkness on the seabed, nearly 2.4 miles (3.8km) below the surface.

It is an incredibly hostile environment that makes visiting the wreck a challenge.

Travelling that deep can take time – it is a two-hour-long descent. Below about 3,300ft (1,000m), sunlight is unable to penetrate the water and everything exists in what is aptly named the "midnight zone". It makes it easy to become disorientated without accurate navigation techniques.

As a submersible travels downwards, the pressure exerted on it by the water above also increases. At the depth of the Titanic wreck, the pressure is about 390 times greater than we experience on the surface.

Submersibles traveling to that depth need to be able to withstand these huge forces, and usually have thick metal hulls to do this.

• Read more about the treacherous waters around the Titanic wreck here

The hearing is in recess and the testimony will reconvene in 10 minutes.

Renata Rojas says she "didn't even ask" if Cyclops - which refers to Titan, the sub that imploded last June - was certified.

But she was told earlier that it was "experimental" and "not classified".

"You were given plenty of opportunity to ask why it was not classified," she tells the hearing.

Rebecca Morelle
Science editor

OceanGate took paying passengers down to see Titanic – a place on the Titan sub could cost up to $250,000.

They were given a particular title – “mission specialists” – and invited to get involved with the sub operations beyond the dive, becoming part of the expedition’s crew.

This could be seen as part of OceanGate’s marketing approach, offering customers more of an experience rather than just a tourist trip to the deep.

But some of the experts I’ve spoken to say they think the company had a different motive.

They believe that describing passengers as part of the crew rather than as paying customers was a way to get around complying with safety and liability issues linked to passenger transport.

Rebecca Morelle
Science editor

The footage is important new evidence for the investigation into why OceanGate’s Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic failure.

Captured by underwater robots last June, it shows the sub in pieces, scattered across the sea floor 3,800m down in the Atlantic.

The footage shows parts of the back end of the sub. You can see its back dome, a titanium end ring and parts of the carbon fibre hull.

The wreckage is mangled - crushed by the immense pressures of the deep ocean in an instantaneous implosion.

Other footage released by the US Coast Guard shows the faring of the tail cone, which housed the onboard electronics. It’s more intact as it wasn’t a part of the sub that was trying to resist the pressure during the descent.

The remains of Titan were recovered last year and brought to the surface - and forensic experts will have been carefully examining them. They want to find out which part of the sub failed.

Rebecca Morelle
Science editor

Renata Rojas, who is giving evidence today, is a self-described Titanic obsessive.

She featured in a BBC Travel Show documentary about Oceangate called Take me To Titanic.

It followed her and other passengers during a dive to the wreck on the Titan sub in 2022.

The dive suffered problems – the pilot could not get the controllers to work properly at the start of the dive, but the passengers did eventually get to see the Titanic.

Renata Rojas is now testifying. As a quick reminder, you can watch the hearing at the top of this page.

Rojas starts by describing what a "mission specialist" is. That's how she has been described in this hearing.

Rojas says it is a volunteer position, which you "only take if you have a knowledge of what you need to be doing".

She says it is always supervised, and "it's really just standing by to see if anyone needs a wrench".

Rebecca Morelle
Science editor

The public hearings have heard from several former OceanGate employees - and their repeated warnings about the sub’s safety.

On Tuesday, David Lochridge - the company’s former director of marine operations, told the US Coast guard that he’d had serious problems with the sub’s design.

He said he’d warned OceanGate about the poor quality of the material the sub was made of - carbon fibre - and told the hearing that he thought it was “inevitable” that something would go wrong.

He was fired by the company in 2018, so took his concerns to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration. But he said they were slow and failed to act - and after increasing pressure from OceanGate’s lawyers, he dropped the case and signed a non disclosure agreement.

At the end of his evidence, he said that if the authorities had properly investigated OceanGate then the tragedy might have been averted.

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of today's hearing into the Titan submersible.

One of the individuals expected to testify today is OceanGate Mission Specialist Renata Rojas.

She's expected to tell the committee about her experience taking the trip down to see the remains of the famous ship.

Rojas, a Mexican citizen, had planned to take one of the OceanGate trips to see the remains of the Titanic in 2020. But the pandemic delayed her plans.

In 2022, she fulfilled her life-long dream.

"I saved for 30 years to see the Titanic," she told the BBC in 2022.

Stick with us as we bring you updates from the hearing. And you can watch it live at the top of this page.