The sharpest seeing autonomous underwater vehicle available is out of storage and being fitted to a newly chartered ship at a marine centre south of Fremantle as better summer sea states set in over the Southern Indian Ocean search area for MH370. The AUV is a Hugin 4500 which was briefly used before the onset […]

The sharpest seeing autonomous underwater vehicle available is out of storage and being fitted to a newly chartered ship at a marine centre south of Fremantle as better summer sea states set in over the Southern Indian Ocean search area for MH370.

The AUV is a Hugin 4500 which was briefly used before the onset of the southern winter made its deployment and recovery too risky. The extra Fugro vessel, the Havila Harmony has the most capable active heave compensated crane yet used in the Malaysia directed Australia managed sea bed search for the sunk wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines 777-200ER missing since 8 March 2014 with 239 people on board.

After calibration trials off the coast of Fremantle, the vessel is expected to sail for the search area this Saturday 28 November arriving 3 December.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre says the AUV will again be used to survey the most difficult portions of the search area that cannot be searched as effectively by the deep tow search systems on the other search vessels.

The weekly search update issued today which includes maps, video links, explanatory graphics and an extensive gallery, can be read here.

The search, down to one ship temporarily because of an injury that caused the other to return to port, is in the general area predicted to hold MH370’s remains by Captain Simon Hardy.

Some objects previously logged as being of potential interest haven’t been sonar scanned with enough definition to determine if they are from MH370, which was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it went dark to air traffic control systems and flew for about seven hours 39 minutes over the southern Indian Ocean to a point where it was last heard pinging a communications satellite that had to be about 44 degrees above the horizon.

The search management has been criticised, rightly or wrongly, for being too quick to dismiss several of these indeterminate objects as not being from MH370. It is hoped that a definitive examination of those objects will be made by the AUV, unless of course Captain Hardy is found to have been correct beforehand.

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