March 26, 2014
PERTH, AUSTRALIA: As frustration was setting in, calmer seas returned on Wednesday and the search for the remains of flight MH370 began anew in remote waters of the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
March 26, 2014
PERTH, AUSTRALIA: As frustration was setting in, calmer seas returned on Wednesday and the search for the remains of flight MH370 began anew in remote waters of the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
An AP-3C Orion takes off from RAAF Base Pearce in Perth, to resume the search for missing Malaysian jet in the southern Indian Ocean on Wednesday.
Gale-force winds that forced an all-day delay on Tuesday died down, allowing a total of 12 planes and two ships from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand to resume the hunt for any pieces of the Malaysia Airlines jet tangible evidence for the families seeking closure after more than two weeks of anguished uncertainty.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Nine Network television on Wednesday – “We’re throwing everything we have at this search.”
“This is about the most inaccessible spot imaginable. It’s thousands of kilometres from anywhere, but nevertheless, we are the closest nation. We are a capable nation. We will do what we can to solve this riddle,” he later told Seven Network television.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which coordinates the search said Wednesday’s search will focus on 80,000 square kilometres of ocean.
Various pieces of floating objects have been spotted southwest of Perth, but none have been retrieved. If they are found to be from the plane, that may help investigators narrow the search for the wreckage of the plane.
The search for the wreckage and the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders could take years because the ocean can extend to up to 23,000 feet deep in some parts. It took two years to find the black box from an Air France jet that went down in the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in 2009, and searchers knew within days where the crash site was.
There is a race against the clock to find MH370’s black boxes, whose battery-powered “pinger” could stop sending signals within two weeks. The batteries are designed to last at least a month.
David Ferreira, an oceanographer at the University of Reading, said little is known about the detailed topography of the seabed where the plane is believed to have crashed.
“We know much more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor in that part of the Indian Ocean,” Mr. Ferreira said.
The satellite information did not provide an exact location only a rough estimate of where the jet went down, and Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the data is still being analysed “to attempt to determine the final position of the aircraft” and that an international working group of satellite and aircraft performance experts had been set up.
Courtesy: AP
