‘Seabed intelligence’ company launches search for Flight MH370
The company, which specializes in collecting high-resolution geophysical seabed data, last year submitted a “no-find, no-fee” proposal to the Malaysian government offering to search for the remains of the missing Boeing 777 plane. Earlier this month the company confirmed that its proposal had been accepted by the Government of Malaysia, and that its search will initially focus on a zone previously identified by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.
Ocean Infinity says its Seabed Constructor vessel is currently in the area, and announced that all eight of its autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) were launched on Monday. The search is expected to last for 90 days.
“We are pleased that our offer to continue the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 has been accepted by the Government of Malaysia, who I would like to thank for giving us the opportunity,” says Ocean Infinity’s CEO, Oliver Plunkett. “Whilst there can be no guarantees of locating the aircraft, we believe our system of multiple autonomous vehicles working simultaneously is well suited to the task at hand.”
Capable of operating in water depths from five to 6,000 meters, Ocean Infinity’s AUVs are “free flying” – i.e., they will not be tethered to the offshore vessel during operations. As a result, says the company, the AUVs will be able to go deeper and collect higher quality data, making them ideal for this search.
The AUVs will be equipped with numerous sensors. These include a side scan sonar, multi-beam echosounder, sub-bottom profiler, HD camera, conductivity/temperature/depth sensor, self-compensating magnetometer, synthetic aperture sonar, and a turbidity sensor (which measures the light scattered by suspended solids in water).
Earlier efforts to find and recover Flight MH370 were called off a year ago after an estimated $200 million had been spent by the governments of Malaysia, Australia, and China over the previous two years with few results. If Ocean Infinity is successful in its efforts, reports say the company could earn as much as $70 million.
For more, see the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s report on the search for MH370: “The Operational Search for MH370” (PDF).
Related articles:
Underwater exploration on the cheap
‘Living sensors’ hold promise for ocean surveillance, says DARPA
Ocean research drones set sail for South Pacific
Pressure-tolerant Li-S batteries for ‘deep-dive’ AUVs move closer to reality
Power scavenging robot ‘squid’ to explore extraterrestrial oceans
If you enjoyed this article, you will like the following ones: don't miss them by subscribing to :
