The latest search for MH370 is the next step in a plan announced by Malaysia last November. Under the plan, Ocean Infinity surveyed about 15,540 square kilometres in the Indian Ocean.
In March this year, the company sent the 78m long Armada 78 06 to an area about 1,600km from the coast of Perth, Australia, scanning the previously searched waters but still having data missing. The ship then expanded its survey to a new area identified by two independent French investigators as likely where MH370 crashed.
In total, the Armada 78 06 searched about 5,180km2, equivalent to a third of the area expected before Ocean Infinity announced a temporary search stop on January 3 due to unsuitable weather.
It is currently summer in the male hemisphere, the weather is favorable for finding a spot in the remaining areas. The ship most likely to carry out the search for MH370 this time is Armada 86 05, a modern ship launched earlier this year.
The search ship for MH370, in its third search, is surveying a sunken ship in the San Bernardino Strait between Samar and Luzon, Philippines. After completion, the ship will travel about 2,400km to Singapore to fuel, get supplies and exchange people, then continue to move 4,350km to the search area for MH370, with a depth of nearly 5km.
In the search area, the Armada 86 05 will deploy 3 hugin AUV automatic diving devices, orange underwater robots like drowning fish, which can operate at a depth of nearly 6.4km for 3 consecutive days before being recharged. Each AUV can scan about 110 km/day using a sonar scanning next to it, creating an image similar to a photo.
At that speed, 3 AUVs can search the area of more than 10,300km2 for about a month. However, Ocean Infinity is implementing many global marine survey projects at the same time, so the ship may be dispatched elsewhere before completing the entire search area.
Flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur on a night flight to Beijing on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 passengers and crew members. However, the Boeing 777 suddenly disappeared from the communications system about 40 minutes after takeoff.
The mysterious satellite signals later showed the plane had reached a remote area in the southern Indian Ocean before landing in the sea. So far, only a few pieces of MH370 have been found drifting ashore.
One of the biggest mysteries of MH370 is why the plane wreck has not been found. Based on the available data, Australian scientists have calculated a probability map, saying that there is a 97% chance of finding the MH370 wreckage in 119,140km2. However, the area was not as good, similar to the 111,370km2 Ocean Infinity surveyed in its second search.
This suggests that something unusual may have happened. A signal sent to the Inmarsat satellite immediately after the plane ran aground showed MH370 falling almost upright.
The lack of a body in the vicinity has led experts to speculate that someone in the cockpit, most likely the captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah, had taken the plane out of the direct crash and let it squeeze further, out of the search area.
Based on the small size of the debris from the MH370 interior drifting ashore in the western Indian Ocean, MH370 is believed to have crashed into the sea.
