Argentina: Missing navy sub tried contacting bases

The calls were made on Saturday to different bases between 10:52 a.m. and 3:42 p.m. and ranged from four to 36 seconds long, the ministry said in a statement to CNN en Español. No communication connection was made.

The navy said the military is working with a US-based company that specializes in satellite communication to determine the location of the submarine, which has been missing for more than three days.

The ARA San Juan submarine and the 44 crew members were traveling through the Atlantic Ocean from a base in far southern Argentina's Tierra del Fuego archipelago to its home port in Mar del Plata. The vessel had been due to arrive at its destination Sunday.

The submarine was last spotted Wednesday in the San Jorge Gulf, a few hundred kilometers off the coast of southern Argentina's Patagonia region and nearly midway between the bases.

News of the search struck a chord in the Vatican. Pope Francis, an Argentina native and a former archbishop of Buenos Aires, offered his "fervent prayers for the 44 officers aboard the ARA San Juan" in a message released on his behalf Saturday by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's secretary of state.

Francis encouraged efforts to find the vessel and "asks that his closeness be conveyed to their families and to the military and civil authorities of the country in these difficult moments," the message reads.

Search efforts

The Argentine navy said it ordered "all terrestrial communication stations along the Argentine coast to carry out a preliminary and extended search of communications and to listen into all the possible frequencies of the submarine."

The US Navy said it was helping. It planned to deploy a P8-A Poseidon maritime aircraft to Argentina on Saturday, the US Naval Forces Southern Command said in a statement.

The 21-person US crew had been in El Salvador supporting "counter-illicit trafficking patrol operations," the agency said in a statement. The aircraft also had assisted in a search for a South Korean ship that sank in April in the South Atlantic, and more recently, it was sent to Dominica in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

NASA will help in the search with a P-3 Orion aircraft, agency spokeswoman Katherine Brown told CNN. She said the US plane was "already in Argentina on a scientific mission."

The P-3 is a turboprop aircraft capable of long-duration flights, according to NASA.