Mini-sub dives again after aborting first MH370 search
Play
Bluefin-21 returns to surface after exceeding depth limit of 4,500 metres
A mini-sub hunting for Malaysian jet MH370 was on a second sweep of the remote Indian Ocean seabed, after aborting its first search when it encountered water deeper than its operating limits.
The unmanned submarine loaded with sonar deployed on Monday night from the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which has spearheaded the hunt for the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8.
“After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded its operating depth limit of 4,500 metres and its built-in safety feature returned it to the surface,” Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) said.
“The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is currently being extracted and analysed,” the JACC said.
The AUV is due to spend 16 hours collecting data.
US Navy Captain Mark Matthews said the vehicle had exceeded programmed operational limits and automatically resurfaced.
“In this case the vehicle’s programmed to fly 30 metres over the floor of the ocean to get a good mapping of what’s beneath,” he told CNN from Perth.
Charts had put the depth at 4,200-4,400 metres, he said.
“It went to 4,500 metres and once it hit that max depth, it said this is deeper than I’m programmed to be, so it aborted the mission.”
Matthews, a search and recovery expert, said the crew would now refine the task to cope with the depth encountered.
“It happened in the very far corner of the area it’s searching. So they are just shifting the search box a little bit away from that deep water.”
The US navy’s Bluefin-21 would embark on a second mission during the day, weather permitting, the JACC said.
Agency chief Angus Houston announced on Monday the end of more than three weeks of listening for signals from the plane’s black boxes and the launch of submarine operations.
The vehicle would survey the silty ocean floor for 16 hours at a time to gather a maximum amount of data, he said.
The forecast for the search zone 2,170 kilometres northwest of Perth is southeasterly winds with scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms, sea swells up to two metres and visibility of five kilometres.
