(The Guardian): More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing after veering thousands of miles off course, its location remains unknown.
The Malaysian government has promised to pay a private company, Ocean Infinity, $70m (£56m) to search for the plane on a “no find, no fee” basis.
The company intends to target a 15,000 sq km (5,800 sq mile) area in the Indian Ocean where it is thought there is the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.
Flight MH370 was carrying 12 Malaysian crew and 227 passengers when it took off from Kuala Lumpur on a routine flight to Beijing, shortly before 1am on 8 March 2014.
More than a decade after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing after veering thousands of miles off course, its location remains unknown.
The Malaysian government has promised to pay a private company, Ocean Infinity, $70m (£56m) to search for the plane on a “no find, no fee” basis.
The company intends to target a 15,000 sq km (5,800 sq mile) area in the Indian Ocean where it is thought there is the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.
What do we know so far?
Flight MH370 was carrying 12 Malaysian crew and 227 passengers when it took off from Kuala Lumpur on a routine flight to Beijing, shortly before 1am on 8 March 2014.
At 2.22am, after turning west, away from its planned route, the Boeing 777 vanished from radar coverage while over the Andaman Sea.
Satellites continued to receive hourly signals from the plane – indicating it was still flying – until just after 8am, when it is believed to have run out of fuel.
These hourly signals have been used to triangulate the distance between a satellite and the plane, but this can only place it within a search zone of 120,000 sq km (46,000 sq miles) of the southern Indian Ocean.
“It’s a monstrously big circle,” says Simon Maskell, professor of autonomous systems at Liverpool University and a former scientific adviser to Ocean Infinity.
Numerous parts and debris have been found around the shores of the Indian Ocean and identified as belonging to MH370, including pieces of the wing, tail, cabin and engine. No human remains have ever been found but everyone onboard is presumed dead.
What is Ocean Infinity?
A marine robotics and seabed survey company, based in the UK and the US, “with a track record of finding things that are difficult to find on the ocean floor”, says Maskell.
The company is best known for providing the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust with submersible experts and underwater robots that helped to locate Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship Endurance in 2022.
In 2018, Ocean Infinity unsuccessfully searched more than 80,000 sq km of ocean for MH370. Now, it is determined to try again.
What equipment will Ocean Infinity use?
The company has a fleet of Hugin 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which can create a 3D map of the ocean floor at depths of up to 6,000 metres using sonar, laser, optic and echo sound technology, with each machine estimated to be worth at least $8m.
Despite operating in the dark, the fleet can capture sonar images of their surroundings by bouncing acoustic pulses off whatever is nearby and using lasers to scan unidentified objects (known as “points of interest”) and create detailed 3D images.
Each free-swimming AUV can be operated remotely but is mainly used to carry out assignments independently of an operator, and then return to the surface. It can stay underwater for 100 hours before its battery runs out.
“You can say: make me a map of that area and come back when you’re done,” says Maskell.
READ FULL REPORT BY THE GUARDIAN HERE
