A mini-sub hunting for Malaysian jet MH370 aborted its first search of the remote Indian Ocean seabed after just six hours because the water was deeper than its operating limits, officials said Tuesday.
Posted on 04/14/2014 9:29:42 PM PDT by OneVike
A mini-sub hunting for Malaysian jet MH370 aborted its first search of the remote Indian Ocean seabed after just six hours because the water was deeper than its operating limits, officials said Tuesday.
The unmanned submarine loaded with sonar to map the ocean floor deployed 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," JACC said, without detailing the exact depth of operations.
"The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is currently being extracted and analysed," JACC said.
The AUV had been due to spend up to 16 hours collecting data.
US Navy Captain Mark Matthews explained the vehicle had exceeded its programmed operational limit and automatically resurfaced.
"There's certain abort criteria that the vehicle has as it's executing its mission," he told CNN from Perth.
"If there's certain conditions that occur, it stops and it comes to the surface.
"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."
Charts 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 that 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 happend 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."
(Excerpt) Read more at emirates247.com ...
If they don’t find the jet, it’s entirely because this whole investigation has been a clown show from the beginning.
I agree.
It sounds like very poor planning, given that the worlds oceans are pretty much mapped as to depth. Sheesh.
What a farce.
Well you are right about one thing they will never find it looking in the Ocean. :-)
They just need to bring in another submersible that can hold its breath longer —
gnip
I wonder if they’ve thought of looking for it in ... oh ... I don’t know ...a hangar maybe?
The old pros are busy preparing for the Obama’s next vacation on the Vineyard. No time.
On Monday Mark Matthews, the United States navy captain who oversees the use of the Bluefin-21, told Guardian Australia that if the vehicle exceeded its limits more than once it would no longer work.
“It could probably go down further than that once, but it wouldn’t be functional after that,” he said.
Matthews said the vehicle was “chosen for its speed of deployment, and principally the mission right now is to localise. It’s got a tactical capability to do those debris fields but it’s certainly not the tool I would use to do a very, very broad area sonar scan”.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/15/mh370-drone-search-short-4500m
What if the Bundy situation was activated to pull interest from the location of MH370 on Diego Garcia. And who would be involved there but the Wonder. We have distractions galore and he has his pen and phone and God help us. Now for some coffee.
Really?
Ask Commander Mooney about that.
The second pic is from the Wiki article on the USS San Francisco
if there was a crash, there would have beeb debris. so the 77 was landed, either on land, or, or the ocean, where it was scuttled to sink without trace.
Bring in the REMUS 6000 —
Deep Ocean, Large Area Search/Survey
The REMUS 6000 is an innovative, versatile research tool designed to operate in depths ranging from 25 meters (82 feet) to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet or 3.73 miles), allowing for a wide range of autonomous operations.
The REMUS 6000 —the largest of the REMUS vehicles— provides ample space and power for even the most challenging applications. The AUV has the ability to travel farther, go deeper, and carry a more complex set of sensors, but it boasts the same proven software and electronic subsystems found in the highly successful REMUS 100 AUV.
The vehicle’s launch and recovery system is designed to function off the stern of a ship and can be set up for shipboard operations within a few hours.
This efficient AUV can be used for numerous exploration and mapping purposes, including hydrographic surveys, environmental monitoring, debris field mapping, search and salvage operations, and scientific sampling and mapping.
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