A mini-sub hunting missing Flight MH370 was set to sweep the Indian Ocean seabed again on Tuesday after cutting short its first mission, as Malaysia vowed to reveal any ‘black box’ data found.
The unmanned submarine equipped with sonar gear was deployed on Monday night from the Australian ship Ocean Shield, which has spearheaded the hunt for the Boeing 777 that vanished on March 8 with 239 people aboard.
But the dive by the Bluefin-21 detected nothing of interest before it automatically aborted the mission after breaching its maximum operating depth, the US Navy said in a statement.
The Australian agency coordinating the search said the Bluefin-21 ‘exceeded its operating depth limit of 4,500 metres (15,000 feet) and its built-in safety feature returned it to the surface’.
The unmanned Autonomous Underwater Vehicle was undamaged and set for a second sonar sweep during the day, weather permitting, officials said. US Navy Captain Mark Matthews said the vehicle had exceeded programmed operational limits and automatically resurfaced.
‘In this case the vehicle’s programmed to fly 30 metres over the floor of the ocean to get a good mapping of what’s beneath,’ he told CNN from Perth.‘It went to 4,500 metres and once it hit that max depth, it said ‘This is deeper than I’m programmed to be’, so it aborted the mission.’
Officials said the crew would now refine the task to cope with the depth encountered.