Rome (CNN) — Salvage experts outlined their plan Friday to raise the wrecked Costa Concordia cruise liner from the sea floor off Italy in one piece and tow it from the disaster site.

The complicated operation is expected to start in the next few days and take up to a year, the ship’s owner, Costa Cruises, said in Rome.

It will be a joint effort by Titan Salvage, an American-owned specialist marine salvage and wreck removal company, and Italian marine contractor Micoperi.

Capt. Richard Habib, president of Titan Salvage, said it was an “unprecedented” operation.

“It is not impossible. It is entirely possible. It will be successful, and we believe that our plan will work,” he said when asked whether there was a backup plan.

At least 30 people died when the cruise liner struck rocks and turned on its side off the Italian island of Giglio on January 13.

The search for two people who remain missing will continue alongside the removal operation, said Franco Gabrielli, head of the Italian Civil Protection agency. The 30 bodies recovered have all been identified.

The ship cannot stay in its current position, as it represents a danger for the environment, he added.

“The plan to re-float the hull in one piece gives top priority to minimising environmental impact, to protecting Giglio’s economy and tourism industry, and to maximum safety of the work,” Costa Cruises said in a statement.

“Once removal is complete, the sea bottom will be cleaned and marine flora replanted.”

The operation will be divided into four basic stages, Costa said in its statement.

First, once the ship has been stabilized, an underwater platform will be built and watertight boxes, or caissons, fixed to the side of the ship that is above water.

Two cranes fixed to the platform will pull the ship upright, helped by the weight of the caissons, which will be filled with water.

When the ship is upright, caissons will be fixed to the other side of the hull to stabilize it.

Finally, the caissons on both sides will be emptied, after the water inside has been purified to protect the marine environment, and filled with air, Costa said.

Once the giant ship has been refloated, it will be towed to an Italian port, probably in Tuscany, to be dismantled and disposed of according to local regulations.

No exact cost was given by the officials who presented details of the recovery operation.

But a Costa Cruises representative said that the figure would probably be about $300 million.

Costa said efforts to prevent damage to Giglio’s tourism industry would include housing workers involved in the recovery operation on the mainland. Equipment will also be stored there.

The Concordia’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is being investigated for possible criminal charges and remains under house arrest.

He faces allegations of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship, failing to report an accident to the coast guard and destroying a natural habitat, a prosecutor said this year. Giglio is a protected park.

Schettino’s first officer, Ciro Ambrosio, and six other officers both on the ship and from the firm Costa in Genoa are under investigation over allegations including manslaughter, shipwreck and failure to report the accident, the prosecutor in the case has said.

No one has been charged over the shipwreck.

CNN’s Hada Messia and Claudia Rebaza contributed to this report.

Mary Kennedy, from whom Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed for divorce in 2010, was found dead on Wednesday, May 16. She was 52.

Members of the Kennedy family attend U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s funeral in August 2009. Two years later, his daughter, Kara Kennedy, died of a heart attack after her daily workout. She is shown being embraced by her daughter, Grace, at right.

A judge sentenced Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel to 20 years to life in prison in 2002 for the 1975 killing of his teenage neighbor Martha Moxley. Skakel is the nephew of Ethel Kennedy Skakel, the widow of the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

A woman cries at a public memorial Mass in New York for John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1999. He died in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. His wife and sister-in-law were also killed.

Michael Kennedy, one of RFK’s 11 children, died in a skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado, in 1997. The father of three had suffered an onslaught of negative publicity over an alleged affair with a family babysitter. No charges were filed.

David Kennedy, another son of RFK, died in 1984 of a drug overdose in a hotel after being ousted from the family vacation home in Palm Beach.

Joe Kennedy, the eldest son of RFK, was involved in a 1973 car accident that left a female passenger paralyzed for life. He later served as a Massachusetts congressman and considered a bid for governor but decided against it, citing family troubles.

Sen. Ted Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Massachusetts’ Chappaquiddick Island after a pary in 1969. Aide Mary Jo Kopechne died in the accident. He is shown wearing a neck brace at her funeral. Controversy over the incident effectively ended his presidential aspirations.

While campaigning for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in June 1968.

In 1964, Ted Kennedy suffered a broken back when his private plane crashed in Southampton, Massachusetts. Indiana Sen. Birch Bayh also survived the crash, but the pilot and one of Kennedy’s aides were killed.

Moments after this photo was taken, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. He was 46.

At just 28, Kathleen Kennedy died in a plane crash in 1948. She had married William John Robert Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington, who was killed in World War II.

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the eldest son of Joseph and Rose Kennedy, died at 29 in a plane crash during World War II.

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“We know from a history of this family, it’s very hard being a Kennedy, either being a blood Kennedy or being married to one,” Laurence Leamer, a Kennedy biographer, said on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.” “The overwhelming celebrity, the attention, the obligations, the expectations that you’re supposed to do something with your life. It’s very, very hard.”

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was assassinated in California while making a run for the White House. His death came more than four years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, also died at the hands of an assassin.

More than three decades later in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, died when a plane he was piloting crashed in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. David Kennedy died of a drug overdose and Michael Kennedy was killed in a skiing accident.

RFK Jr.’s estranged wife found dead

Author: It’s hard being a Kennedy

Few details of Mary Kennedy’s death were immediately available.

The Bedford Police Department confirmed Wednesday that they were investigating a possible unattended death at an address owned by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Authorities found a deceased individual inside “an out building” on the property, police said in a statement.

“It is with deep sadness that the family of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. mourns the loss of Mary Richardson Kennedy, wife and mother of their four beloved children. Mary inspired our family with her kindness, her love, her gentle soul and generous spirit,” a statement by the husband’s family said.

“We deeply regret the death of our beloved sister Mary, whose radiant and creative spirit will be sorely missed by those who loved her. Our heart goes out to her children who she loved without reservation,” her family said in a statement.

The couple married in a civil ceremony in 1994 when Mary Richardson, a designer, was six months pregnant, according to the Westchester County Journal News. One month prior to the wedding, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. divorced his first wife, Emily Black, the mother of his two oldest children, the newspaper reported.

He filed for divorce from Mary Kennedy two years ago, but the couple was still married at the time of her death, her family attorney, Kerry A. Lawrence, said.

Mary Kennedy was “a tremendously gifted architect and a pioneer and relentless advocate of green design who enhanced her cutting edge, energy efficient creations with exquisite taste and style,” Robert F. Kennedy’s family said in a statement.

She advocated finding a cure for food allergies and asthma and was a co-founder of the Food Allergy Initiative, which is the world’s largest private source of funding for food allergy research, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s family said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent environmental lawyer who is a professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York, is the third of 11 children born to Ethel and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.

Details of the couple’s private lives were exposed after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. filed for divorce in Westchester County on May 12, 2010.

The next evening, according to police records, Bedford police responded to a 911 call. When police arrived at the Kennedy residence, they found the couple in an argument over taking their four children to a carnival at St. Patrick’s School.

According to a “domestic incident” report filed by the officer on the scene, “Mr. Kennedy stated that his wife was intoxicated and was acting irrational so he took the children to the carnival to remove them from the situation.”

No one was injured, the report said.

Two days later, Mary Kennedy was arrested for driving while intoxicated.

At the time, Bedford Police Lt. Jeff Dickans told CNN that a Bedford police officer saw Kennedy’s 2004 Volvo swerving onto the curb of Greenwich Road in Bedford and asked her to pull over.

Kennedy had slurred speech, and a blood-alcohol content above 0.08 percent, the legal limit in New York. She was charged with driving while intoxicated.

Lawrence said the case resulted in a reduction to a violation, the criminal charge was dismissed and her driver’s license was suspended for 90 days.

A second arrest occurred in August of the same year in the town of Pleasant Valley, in which she was charged with driving while impaired by prescription drugs, Lawrence said. Those charges were dismissed completely in July 2011 because all the drugs were prescribed and taken as her physician advised, the attorney said.

As a designer, Mary Kennedy specialized in green architecture. In a book entitled “Kennedy Green House” and co-authored by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he describes how he and his wife restored their flooded, black-mold-infested home into an eco-friendly residence.

In the book, her husband wrote that she had worked for the design firm Parish-Hadley and worked on the renovation of the Naval Observatory in Washington, the official residence of the U.S. vice president.

CNN’s Michael Martinez and Rob Frehse contributed to this report