SYDNEY: A deep-sea drone completed its much-anticipated first full scan of the seabed in the remote Indian Ocean, the team looking for a missing Malaysian jetliner said on Thursday, as an air and surface search became less likely to yield results.
Footage from a U.S. Navy deep-sea drone is fast becoming the most important tool for a multinational team searching for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared from radar screens on March 8 with 239 people aboard.
A sample taken from an oil slick in the same area, some 2,000 km (1,240 miles) west of the Australian city of Perth, is also being analyzed. Authorities believe that is the most likely area where the missing jet hit the ocean after disappearing.
A series of “pings” recorded this month have led searchers to the remote stretch of ocean in the belief that the signals may have come from the plane’s black box recorders. However, with no pings received in more than a week and the black box’s battery now 10 days past its approximate expiry date, authorities are relying on the drone. The “Bluefin-21” drone completed its first full 16-hour deployment at a depth of 4.5 km (14,765 feet) late on Wednesday after a series of technical problems cut short the first two attempts.
“Bluefin-21 has searched approximately 90 square kilometers (35 square miles) to date and the data from its latest mission is being analyzed,” the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, the body running the search, said in a statement. On Monday, the search coordinator, retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said the air and surface search for debris would likely end in three days as the operation shifted its focus to the largely unmapped area of ocean floor. (Reuters)
