Searchers who are working on finding the missing Malaysia Airlines plane will be deploying a robotic submarine for the first time in an attempt to locate the jet which has been missing for over a month now. The chief of search mission, Angus Houston said that they will be sending the Bluefin-21 drone as soon as possible in order to look for the plane’s wreckage on the sea floor.
So far, search teams have been using a towed ping locator in order to listen to signals coming from the black box of the plane. Unfortunately, no new signals have been heard since April 8, 2014 and there are concerns that the batteries of the flight recorders might have expired. The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 went missing on March 8, 2014 and was carrying 239 people on board.
The plane was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, however, it lost contact with air traffic controllers somewhere over the South China Sea. Based on satellite data, Malaysian officials think that the plane ended its flight in the southern Indian Ocean. An international search has been launched and a number of teams are racing against time in order to detect signals before the batteries of the flight recorder run out.
The officials are confident that the signals which were picked up by the pinger locator towed by an Australian ship are consistent with the flight recorders.
Photo Credits: Therepublic
