The location of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 bound for Beijing remains a mystery 11 years after it disappeared, having deviated several thousand kilometers from its route. The Malaysian government has promised to pay $70 million (around 59.4 million euros) to Ocean Infinity, a private company, on one condition: it will only give the money if the device appears.
The company plans to examine a 15,000 square kilometer area of the Indian Ocean, where the probability of finding the missing plane is estimated to be greatest.
What do we know so far?
The Boeing 777 was carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew members when it took off from Kuala Lumpur shortly before 1 a.m. on March 8, 2014 for a routine flight to Beijing.
At 2:22 a.m., after deviating from the planned route with a turn to the west, the plane disappeared from radar while flying over the Andaman Sea. But satellites continued to receive signals from the plane every hour until shortly after 8 a.m. In other words, it continued to fly until that time, when it is believed that it ran out of fuel.
With these signals arriving every hour, it was possible to triangulate the distance between a satellite and the plane, but the area of possible locations that this implies is still too wide: 120,000 square kilometers in the southern Indian Ocean. “A monstrously big circle,” according to Simon Maskell, professor of autonomous systems at the University of Liverpool and former scientific advisor to Ocean Infinity.
Many remains and pieces of MH370 have been found on the coasts of the Indian Ocean. Among them, fragments of the wing, tail, cabin and engine. No human remains were found. It is assumed that all passengers and crew members of the plane are dead.
What is Ocean Infinity?
An Anglo-American marine exploration and robotics company that, according to Maskell, has “some challenging discoveries on the ocean floor” to its credit.
The company rose to prominence when it supplied the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust with the submersible and underwater robot experts who helped locate Sir Ernest Shackleton’s lost ship, the Endurance, in 2022.
Ocean Infinity previously searched an area of more than 80,000 square kilometers of ocean for MH370 in 2018, but was unsuccessful. Now she is determined to try again.
What equipment will the expedition use?
The company has a fleet of Hugin 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), which integrate sonar, laser, optical and echo sounder technologies to create three-dimensional maps of the seabed at depths of up to 6,000 meters. Each machine has a minimum value estimated at eight million dollars (around 6.8 million euros).
Although they operate in the dark, these AUVs can capture sonar images of the environment by bouncing acoustic pulses off anything nearby and scanning unidentified objects (called “points of interest”) with lasers to create detailed three-dimensional images.
AUVs can be controlled remotely, but generally perform their tasks autonomously. The battery allows them to last 100 hours before returning to the surface. “You can tell them ‘make me a map of this area and come back when you’re done,'” Maskell says.
What happens if they find a piece of the plane?
AUVs can send limited samples of the data they collect to the ship, detecting a “point of interest” for example. Operators can also change their mission based on the progress they see using an acoustic communication system.
“The AUV uses an underground profiler to see how much sediment is present and how far you have to travel to reach the solid rock bottom,” explains Richard Godfrey, an independent aviation researcher. “It also has a magnetometer to detect metals, even if they are buried under several meters of sediment,” he adds.
If necessary, the ship can also send remotely operated submersible vehicles (ROVs) to shine a spotlight on objects so they can be filmed and photographed. These ROVs have remotely controllable robotic arms, which allow them to grasp, rotate and examine objects. They can also bring smaller objects to the surface.
What is the search area?
Ocean Infinity began searching the 15,000 square kilometer priority area in February and suspended the expedition in April due to poor weather conditions. On December 30, research will resume for a period of 55 days. After spending “tens of millions of dollars” on vessels and equipment, the company has already tracked nearly 10,000 square kilometers, by Godfrey’s calculations, and plans to track another 25,000.
“I don’t think they’ll do it for the $70 million financial reward, because this research is very, very expensive,” Godfrey says. “I think they are doing it for the success and the opportunity to present themselves as the best underwater research company in the world to find MH370,” he deduces.
What are the main challenges?
“The seabed is a very complex environment to navigate,” says Maskell. “It’s not flat; there are mountains, mountain ranges and huge chasms, and you have to look everywhere,” he describes.
In the Indian Ocean, there are canyons more than 300 meters deep, cliffs that suddenly rise thousands of meters from the seafloor, and active volcanoes to pay attention to, he says.
The area tracked by Ocean Infinity has already been surveyed, but it is believed that the data collected may be incomplete. “It’s not a very easy place to do research; one of the biggest challenges Ocean Infinity faces is the risk of being very close to the remains of MH370 and not finding them due to the difficulty of the terrain or gaps in exploration data,” adds the expert.
Added to this difficulty is the fact that the company’s ships navigate “very inhospitable waters,” explains Maskell. “It’s not a place where you want to go kayaking, the sea is very rough,” he says.
The crew must continually analyze data, recharge the AUVs when they return to the surface, supervise the AUVs and ROVs still searching the bed, ensure all equipment is working properly, and repair any breakdowns, “all while trying not to get seasick from the ridiculously large waves they encounter,” he says.
But the main challenge of this mission is deciding where to look, something Ocean Infinity says it has already overcome. As Maskell puts it, “You can have the best technology in the world, but if you look in the wrong places, it won’t do you any good.”
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