Bluefin suffers second technical glitch but issue resolved

epa04167658 An undated handout picture made available by the Australian Department of Defense (DOD) on 15 April 2014 shows the Phoenix Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Artemis in the water after being craned over the side of the Australian Defense Vessel (ADV) Ocean Shield in the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at sea in the Indian Ocean. The AUV Bluefin-21 has been deployed in the Indian Ocean search for wreckage from the missing Malaysia Airlines plane MH370, officials said on 14 April 2014. The Bluefin-21 is fitted with either sonar or a camera and can stay below for anything up to 20 hours at a stretch as it scans the ocean floor for irregularities. It has no capacity to retrieve anything from the ocean floor. The switch in tactics by the multinational forces comes six days after the last signal was picked up by the device the Ocean Shield is towing. 'We haven't had a single detection in six days, so I guess it's time to go under water,' Australian search leader Angus Houston told

PERTH: The Autonomous Under­water Vehicle (AUV) Bluefin-21 faced a second technical issue since its maiden underwater mission to search for the whereabouts of missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370.

The Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC), which oversees the search operation, said the unmanned vehicle was brought up again early into its 13th mission on Friday due to a software issue that required resetting.

It said the AUV had technically sophisticated equipment, and a reset was not uncommon, and the issue nonetheless had been resolved overnight by technicians.

In a statement issued yesterday, JACC said the 14th mission was now under way.

On April 16, the Bluefin-21, which was on its second mission, faced a technical issue which forced it to abort the mission and resurface.

However, it was again redeployed to continue its mission underwater on the same day after the issue was resolved.

Yesterday marked the 50th day of the search for MH370, and until now there has been no contact of interest on the surface or underwater.

The Bluefin-21 was dispatched on its maiden mission on April 14 in the hope of locating any debris of the missing plane underwater following no further confirmed signals picked up by the Towed Pinger Locator since April 8.

It uses acoustic sounds to create a three dimensional map of the sea floor and will take a minimum of 24 hours to complete each mission. To date, it has covered 95% of the underwater search area, said JACC.

Flight MH370, with 239 people aboard, left KL International Airport at 12.41am on March 8 and disappeared from radar screens about an hour later while over the South China Sea. It was to have arrived in Beijing at 6.30am the same day.

A multinational search was mounted for the Boeing 777-200 aircraft, first in the South China Sea and then, after it was learnt that the plane had veered off course, in the southern Indian Ocean. — Bernama