Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Latest Search Update: Search for Missing Plane Resumes
After being put on hold for four months, the search for the missing Malaysian Airlines flight 370 has resumed on Monday, Oct. 6, in the southern part of the Indian Ocean. One of the three ships for the rebooted mission, the GO Phoenix, has begun doing sonar sweeps of the ocean floor. The ship is expected to spend 12 days hunting for the missing aircraft before heading back to shore to refuel.
The search zone, which measures about 23,000 square miles, is about 1,100 miles west of Australia, which is where the investigators believe the aircraft might have ran out of fuel and crashed. Officials analyzed transmissions between the plane and a satellite to estimate where it entered the water.
The crew onboard the GO Phoenix will use video cameras, sonar, and jet fuel sensors to search for the aircraft, a Boeing 777, which vanished for unknown reasons on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane had 239 people onboard.
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Two other ships selected by Australia from the Dutch oil and gas consulting firm Fugro are expected to join the GO Phoenix later this month. The GO Phoenix was contracted by the Malaysian government.
According to FOX News, the ship has deployed a delicate sonar device known as a towfish that is being pulled along 100 meters above the seafloor. The towfish is expected to cope with the depths of the search zone, which is reportedly 4 miles deep in places. If anything of interest is detected by the sonar, the crew will then attach a video camera to the towfish to film the seabed.
