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More deep-sea signals heighten hopes of locating missing Malaysian airliner More deep-sea signals heighten hopes of locating missing Malaysian airliner
(about 2 hours later)
After an Australian vessel again detected deep-sea signals consistent with those from an airplane’s black box, the official leading a multination search says he’s hopeful crews will find the wreckage of a missing Malaysian jet “within a matter of days.”After an Australian vessel again detected deep-sea signals consistent with those from an airplane’s black box, the official leading a multination search says he’s hopeful crews will find the wreckage of a missing Malaysian jet “within a matter of days.”
“I believe we’re searching in the right area,” Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said at a press conference in Perth.“I believe we’re searching in the right area,” Retired Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston said at a press conference in Perth.
Since Saturday, the Ocean Shield — equipped with a U.S. Navy black box detection system — has picked up four separate transmissions, the two most recent of which came on Tuesday. The newest signals are significant, because the increased data could allow searchers to more accurately predict where on the Indian Ocean floor the sounds are coming from.Since Saturday, the Ocean Shield — equipped with a U.S. Navy black box detection system — has picked up four separate transmissions, the two most recent of which came on Tuesday. The newest signals are significant, because the increased data could allow searchers to more accurately predict where on the Indian Ocean floor the sounds are coming from.
The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has carried on for more than a month, often plagued by false leads. But gradually, a group of satellite analysts and search teams have trimmed the potential area where they believe the plane might have crashed. At its largest, the area was 2.96 million square miles. Now, it’s less than 30,000. In earlier weeks the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 involved more than 100 ships and aircraft, searching much of the world’s largest continent and third-largest ocean. But the operation has now narrowed, with the help of satellite analysis and the deep-sea signals, into something officials say is finally manageable.
A search area once the size of the contiguous United States is now about the size of South Carolina. Though 15 aircraft and 14 ships are still scouring the Indian Ocean, search officials say the best lead is being pursued only by the Ocean Shield. If other ships joined that area, Houston said, they’d create noise pollution and interfere with any sounds coming from the three-mile depths.
Australia so far has analyzed the first two acoustic transmissions, which officials describe as a metronomic ping recurring every 1.106 seconds. Australian analysis determined that the sounds were “not of natural origin,” Houston said, “and likely sourced from specific electronic equipment.”
Black boxes generally transmit at 37.5 kilohertz, but that signal can degrade over time.
The frequency picked up by the Ocean Shield: 33.331 kilohertz.
“I’m now optimistic that we will find the aircraft, or what is left of the aircraft, in the not too distant future,” Houston said. “But we haven’t found it yet, because this is a very challenging business.”
The next step in the search requires the use of a robot-like submarine, which crawls along the ocean floor, using sonar to map out any debris. But that step is laborious, and Houston said Tuesday that searchers won’t deploy the underwater robot until they’ve either picked up additional transmissions or are certain they’ve stopped. The black box batteries that emit emergency beacons are estimated to last for about 30 days. Tuesday was the 33rd day of the search.The next step in the search requires the use of a robot-like submarine, which crawls along the ocean floor, using sonar to map out any debris. But that step is laborious, and Houston said Tuesday that searchers won’t deploy the underwater robot until they’ve either picked up additional transmissions or are certain they’ve stopped. The black box batteries that emit emergency beacons are estimated to last for about 30 days. Tuesday was the 33rd day of the search.
“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area,” Houston said. “And by triangulating all of this positional data, we’ll be able to come up with a much more sharply defined search area — a much smaller search area under water.”“Hopefully with lots of transmissions we’ll have a tight, small area,” Houston said. “And by triangulating all of this positional data, we’ll be able to come up with a much more sharply defined search area — a much smaller search area under water.”
The deployment of the underwater robot, the Bluefin-21, would open a new phase in the search — one with a new set of challenges. The Bluefin would be working in depths approaching its technical limit. It also moves slowly, and could require dozens of sorties before finding any debris. In the case of Air France Flight 447, which went missing in 2009 over the Atlantic, searchers needed 20 days of underwater exploration before they found anything, Houston said, even though they believed they had a good idea of where the plane went down.
Only last Friday did search teams in the Indian Ocean begin using black box detection equipment. But that move has reinvigorated the search. The Ocean Shield’s four detections have occurred within a 20-mile area, according to a map released by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.
A Chinese ship, the Haixun 01, which several days ago reported detections of its own, has not reacquired any signal. The Haixun and the Ocean Shield are operating roughly 300 nautical miles apart, too far for their detections to be coming from a single source.
Flight MH370, a red-eye from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, veered from its flight path shortly after take-off in a move that Malaysian officials say was deliberately engineered by somebody on board.
More than a month into the search, search teams have yet to uncover any wreckage, and numerous sightings of debris later turned out to be false leads. Analysts have pieced together the plane’s likely endpoint using a series of signals the plane sent to a satellite while aloft. Based on that data, the endpoint could be anywhere along an arc that crosses through the Indian Ocean to the west of Australia.
The Ocean Shield detected the potential black box transmissions along one area of that arc.