A robotic underwater drone was on Monday deployed for the first time to locate the crashed Malaysian jet’s ‘final resting place’ in the Indian Ocean at a depth of 4,500 metres after searchers failed to detect any signals from the plane’s black boxes in a week.
The Bluefin 21, a US Navy probe equipped with side-scan sonar, was launched this evening from the Australian navy ship Ocean Shield, the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) which is leading the search said on the 38th day of the hunt for the Flight MH370 that mysteriously disappeared on March 8.
“We haven’t had a single detection in six days so I guess it’s time to go underwater,” Australian chief search coordinator Angus Houston told a Press conference.Earlier on Monday, he said the Ocean Shield will cease searching with the towed pinger locater and deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle as soon as possible.
In another significant development in the search, Houston said two litres of the newly spotted oil slick had been collected for testing.“I stress the source of the oil is yet to be determined but the oil slick is approximately 5,500 metres downwind... from the vicinity of the detections picked up by the towed pinger locater on Ocean Shield,” he said.