Chinese ship to join search for missing Flight 370
Print Edition
A CHINESE ship equipped with advanced sonar equipment will soon join the search for the Malaysian airliner believed to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean almost two years ago.
The “Dong Hai Jiu 101” is scheduled to leave Singapore tomorrow to join the hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 over a 120,000-square-kilometer expanse of seabed by late February, said Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss.
The ship brings the state-of-the-art Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS), which some experts say is more accurate than standard 75kHz side-scan sonar devices that have so far been used.
With acoustic sonar, the images become less clear the farther objects are from the equipment. With SAS, however, the image remains sharp regardless of an object’s distance.
Fugro Survey, the Dutch underwater survey company hired by Australia to find the Boeing 777, has defended its choice of sonar and maintains the search has been thorough.
Fugro search director Paul Kennedy described SAS as developing technology with some questions about its reliability. Because the search was in such a remote region, Fugro opted for established technology with ready supplies of spare parts.
The “Dong Hai Jiu 101” will join two Fugro ships, “Furgo Discovery” and “Furgo Equator,” which will continue to search with standard sonar equipment.
“Fugro Discovery” lost its sonar unit plus 4.5km of cable at the weekend when it towed the equipment into an underwater volcano.
A fourth ship, “Havila Harmony,” is equipped with a maneuverable deep-sea drone that has been fitted with a camera and high-resolution sonar for searching tough terrain and for taking a closer look at clues.
The ProSAS-60 sonar equipment aboard the Chinese ship will be operated by marine services companies Phoenix International Holdings, based in Maryland, and Seattle-based Hydrospheric Solutions.
The firms gained experience searching for the plane when they operated “Go Phoenix,” a ship that was contracted by Malaysia to take part in the search for eight months until last June.
More than 85,000 square kilometers of the search area have been scoured since late 2014.
Most of the 239 passengers were Chinese.
The plane vanished on March 8, 2014, after mysteriously flying far off course during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
A wing flap found in July on the other side of the Indian Ocean when it washed up on Reunion Island is the only debris recovered.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
