MH370 surveys extended
Fugro, the Dutch survey conglomerate, has been awarded a £27m contract by the Australian government for a second deep ocean search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Boeing Flight MH370 carrying 239 passengers and crew which is believed to have crashed somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean last March.
Using satellite and simulation data, experts think that the jet lies on the ocean bed northwest of Australia within a 60,000 square kilometre rectangle below the plane’s final flight path. Fugro, which has already been conducting earlier investigations aboard its survey vessel Fugro Equator, will now also deploy a second vessel, Fugro Discovery, for a renewed search due to begin this month (September).
Both ships will tow submerged unmanned vehicles to scan the seabed with sonar equipment and high-resolution video cameras. They will be joined by a Royal Malaysian Navy hydrographic vessel, KD Mutiara, and a Chinese naval ship, Zhu Kezhen. Resulting bathymetric data will also be used to chart previously unmapped ocean floor topography believed to contain yet more huge crevasses and underwater volcanoes.
According to Warren Truss, Australia’s Transport Minister, the new search operations could take up to a year to complete but they do not provide for the recovery of MH370 if the remains of the aircraft are found.
By David Goodfellow
