By Sarah McBride
Elon Musk's engineering team is set to arrive in Thailand on Saturday to help free a boys' soccer team from a cave, where a diver died in the rescue effort.
The Thai government confirmed the timeline for Musk's group in a Facebook post. The billionaire's companies may assist by trying to pinpoint the boys' precise location using Space Exploration Technologies Corp. or Boring Co. technology, pumping water or providing heavy-duty battery packs known as Tesla Powerwalls, a spokesman for Musk said earlier.
A video taken by Thai Navy SEALs shows the boys in the cave.
In a message posted on Twitter, the billionaire entrepreneur confirmed his team would head to Thailand on Saturday.
Twelve boys and their coach, who had been missing since last month, were found by a pair of British cave divers late on Monday. Efforts to rescue them are hampered by narrow passageways and rising waters in the cave system. Most of the boys cannot swim. A former Thai navy SEAL died early Friday during an underwater swim.
Last year, after a devastating hurricane hit Puerto Rico, the government there asked Musk for help. Tesla sent Powerwalls and provided advice on rebuilding the Caribbean island's infrastructure.
On Twitter over recent hours, Musk mooted ways to help, including the possibility of inserting tubes and then inflating them with air, similar to the way bouncy castles work.
Other tweets reference the location of water and depths of different parts of the cave, making clear he had studied diagrams in detail.
Musk also held a Twitter exchange with Thai satellite entrepreneur James Yenbamroong, asking questions about the voltage and amperage of electricity produced by generator trucks at the rescue site.
Musk's tunnelling startup Boring Co. could potentially make available its massive drills or excavation expertise, but such an approach could be too dangerous for this mission.
BloombergÂ