The Search for Missing Plane MH370 is Back on
upstart writes:
More than 11 years after the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the Malaysian government has approved a new search for the missing debris of the aircraft.
Malaysia announced the push for a renewed search last year, ten years after the tragedy that claimed the lives of 239 people.
Seabed exploration firm Ocean Infinity, which conducted an unsuccessful search in 2018, prepared a new proposal to which Malaysia's government agreed in principle in December last year.
Now, the company has returned to the southern Indian Ocean 1,500 kilometres west of Perth - with a suite of new high-tech tools.
[...] The new search area for MH370 is roughly the size of metropolitan Sydney. It was identified in collaboration with experts based on refined analysis of information received after the aircraft disappeared. This information included weather, satellite data and the location of debris attributed to the aircraft which washed up along the coast of Africa and islands in the Indian Ocean.
For this search, Ocean Infinity will be using a new 78 metre offshore support vessel, the Armada 7806. It was built by Norwegian shipbuilder Vard in 2023.
The Armada 7806 is equipped with a fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles manufactured by the Norwegian firm Kongsberg.
These 6.2m long vehicles are capable of operating independently of the support vessel at depths of up to 6,000m for up to 100 hours at a time. They are equipped with advanced sonar technology, including sidescan, synthetic aperture, multibeam and sub-bottom profiling sonar.
[...] Since its previous search in 2018, Ocean Infinity has made significant advancements in its marine robotics and data analytics capabilities. It has demonstrated its capacity to simultaneously deploy multiple vehicles at depths of up to 6,000m.
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