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Search teams will send unmanned submarine to look for missing Malaysia Airlines flight Search teams will send unmanned submarine to look for missing Malaysia Airlines flight
(about 2 hours later)
Teams searching for a missing Malaysian passenger jet are planning for the first time to send an unmanned submarine into the depths of the Indian Ocean to look for wreckage, an Australian official leading the multi-nation search said Monday.Teams searching for a missing Malaysian passenger jet are planning for the first time to send an unmanned submarine into the depths of the Indian Ocean to look for wreckage, an Australian official leading the multi-nation search said Monday.
The search of the 2.8-mile depths will be a painstaking process, the Australian search official, Angus Houston, said, but allows search teams to follow up on deep-sea acoustic signals that could be coming from the Boeing-777’s black boxes. The deployment of the submersible drone opens a new phase in the five-week search, one focusing on a pitch-black, silt-covered patch of the ocean floor. The drone moves at walking speed, and searching with it will be painstaking. But it allows investigators to follow up on their best lead to date: deep-sea acoustic signals that could be coming from the Boeing-777’s black boxes.
The 16-foot submersible drone, known as the Bluefin-21, could be deployed as early as Monday night, Houston said. The Bluefin, which is already on board an Australian naval vessel in the search region, uses sonar to create a three-dimensional map of the ocean floor. The submersible drone, known as the Bluefin-21, will use sonar to provide search crews with a three-dimensional map of the Indian Ocean floor, an area so unexplored that it is practically “new to man,” said Angus Houston, the Australian official in charge of the search. The Bluefin-21 will likely begin its mission Monday evening.
The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has lasted for more than five weeks, and four detected acoustic signals — potential black box transmissions —mark the best lead. But the batteries powering an aircraft black box have a shelf life of 30 days. The last transmission came six days ago, and the batteries by now could have died, Houston said. Thirty-eight days into the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, there have been no confirmed sightings of debris. The best hint of the plane’s location comes from four acoustic signals — potential black box transmissions — that were detected by an Australian naval vessel equipped with specialized listening equipment. The last transmission, though, came six days ago, and the aircraft black box batteries are already well past their 30-day shelf life. The batteries by now could have died, Houston said.
“I would caution against raising hopes that the deployment of the underwater vehicle will result in detection of underwater wreckage,” Houston said. “It may not. However, this is the best lead we have.“I would caution against raising hopes that the deployment of the underwater vehicle will result in detection of underwater wreckage,” Houston said. “It may not. However, this is the best lead we have.
“We’ve got to find wreckage before we can finally say we’ve solved this mystery.”“We’ve got to find wreckage before we can finally say we’ve solved this mystery.”
Separately, Australian officials say they’re also investigating an oil slick detected some 3-1/2 miles downwind from the acoustic signals. The oil slick could be the latest in a series of dead ends that includes numerous false sightings of debris. But Houston said that several liters of the oil have been sampled for analysis — a process that will take several days. The Bluefin-21 — 16 feet long, yellow, shaped like a submarine — is already on board the Australian vessel, the Ocean Shield, operating roughly 1,050 miles northwest of Perth. For more than a week, the Ocean Shield has been dragging a towed pinger locator through the water to listen for possible pings from MH370’s black boxes.
Separately, Houston said Monday, the Ocean Shield also came across an oil slick about 3-1/2 miles downwind from the area where it picked up the signals. Though the oil slick could be unrelated to the plane, about half a gallon has been sampled for analysis — a process that will take several days, Houston said.
The Ocean Shield doesn’t have the capability to use the towed pinger locator — connected to miles of cables — and the Bluefin-21 at the same time. The four pings were detected in a loose oval about 20 to 25 miles apart. That translates into an underwater search zone of some 500 square miles, an area that the Bluefin-21 could need weeks to trawl. Search officials had been hoping that additional detections could help narrow the ocean floor area where the submersible will scan for evidence of the plane.
The underwater operation will be a slow one, moving in 24-hour cycles. The submersible will spend 20 hours at a time underwater: two hours to make the dive, 16 hours scanning the depths, and two more hours for the ascent. Crew members on the Ocean Shield will then take four hours to download the data. The Bluefin-21 doesn’t transmit information about what it is seeing in real time.