The GO Phoenix search
vessel arrived in the search area in the southern Indian Ocean and
started its search Monday morning (Sunday evening ET), the Australian
Transport Safety Board (ATSB) said. It marks the beginning of a
potentially year-long search operation, spearheaded by Australian
authorities.
The ship, and two others
which will arrive within the month, will conduct detailed sonar sweeps
in an attempt to locate wreckage of the plane.
The disappearance of
MH370 is arguably the greatest mystery in the history of commercial
flight, with an extensive search failing to turn up a single piece of
definitive evidence of its whereabouts.
Here's where we are with the search for MH370.
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What happened initially?
Around 1:30 a.m. on March
8, air traffic controllers in Subang, outside Kuala Lumpur, lost
contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777-200ER, over the
sea between Malaysia and Vietnam.
The plane's transponder,
which identifies the aircraft and relays details like altitude and speed
to controllers, stopped transmitting, and the passenger jet seemingly
disappeared without a trace.
Planes and ships from 14
countries initially searched areas of the South China Sea, the south of
Vietnam and the Malaysian peninsula.
The search was then
widened and then shifted location as it was determined, through careful
analysis of aircraft performance, cross-referenced with data from the
Immarsat "handshakes," that the plane diverted south. Since then
resources have been focused on a swathe of the Indian Ocean, around 2000
km (1242 miles) off the west coast of Australia, the so-called "seventh arc."
Continued analysis of
the satellite data, along with a better understanding of the
communication between aircraft and satellite and of aircraft performance
limits has enabled investigators to further refine the search areas.
Although search teams
have been focusing along the seventh arc or "partial handshake," where
investigators believe the aircraft ran out of fuel, for months, it's
only within the past several weeks that investigators have shifted their
focus further south. It is in this area that GO Phoenix has begun its
underwater search.
What has been done in the Indian Ocean so far?
After seven weeks of
intense but fruitless searching, the international air effort to find
the plane ended in late April, shifting the focus to an underwater
search. Hopes were raised in May as radio beacon signals -- "pings" --
were thought to have been detected, but the area where the pings were
thought to originate from was discounted in May.
Since the active search was postponed, the Australian government has been creating an accurate survey
of the sea floor in the search area. One ship, from Dutch surveying
company Fugro, continues to map the underwater topography. To date, over
111,000 square kilometers of the wide search area have been analyzed
and mapped by the Australian government and its contractors.
The existing data for
the sea floor in that area is at a very low resolution, says Stuart
Minchin, head of the Environmental Geoscience Division of Geoscience
Australia, the agency overseeing the mapping process. Getting an
accurate picture is crucial as the drones that will be conducting the
underwater sonar search in the upcoming phase will need to be guided
with precision to avoid damage.
"In the second phase of
the search, which involves towing devices close to the sea bed to get a
very fine resolution picture of what's down there it's important to have
that level of detail so we don't run into objects," he said.
"It's a long way from
shore at very significant depths so it's a logistical challenge. It's
unprecedented in terms of doing a survey of this size and in this remote
location."
It has been an involved, long and difficult process -- back in March, Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, said "We're not searching for a needle in a haystack, we're still trying to define where the haystack is."
Authorities are
confident that they have accurately identified the correct search areas
now. Martin Dolan, Chief Commissioner and CEO of the ATSB, the agency
leading the search, told CNN's David Molko that, should satellite
analysis have led his team to the right spot, the current technology
would locate aircraft wreckage.
"What we'd say is we've
probably limited it to a small number of haystacks, and we have very
good techniques for detecting needles in those haystacks," he said. "We
have high confidence that if we've got the right haystack, we'll find
the needle in it."
In a statement, the ATSB also said that the enhanced data from the detailed mapping will greatly assist the search teams.
"The recently acquired
(underwater survey) data has revealed many of these seabed features for
the first time," the statement read. The survey also reveals finer
features that were not visible in previous, low-resolution survey data.
At the request of the
Malaysian government, the Australian government -- in particular the
ATSB -- has been tasked with leading what will almost certainly turn out
to be a long, painstaking search.
"The complexities
surrounding the search cannot be understated," the ATSB says. "It
involves vast areas of the Indian Ocean with only limited known data and
aircraft flight information."
What happens next?
The Australian
government said in August that it has picked Fugro Survey, a Dutch
company for the mapping and the next phase of undersea search, along
with a vessel, the GO Phoenix, supplied by the Malaysian government.
The latter arrived at
its assigned search zone late Sunday and deployed towed sonar to begin
the search on Monday. It will conduct search activity for 12 days before
going to Fremantle, in western Australia, for resupply.
The search vessel will
be joined by the two Dutch ships, the Fugro Discovery and the Fugro
Equator, later in the month. The Equator is currently finishing up
detailed mapping of the search zones.
"The current plan
envisages that we will progressively cover our priority search areas
over the course of about a year," the ATSB's Dolan told CNN by phone.
What we know is that the
aircraft will be found close to the arc, the final attempt at
communication between the aircraft systems and ground stations. We've
done progressively more refined and detailed analysis of the other
satellite information that has enabled us to prioritise (search areas)
along that arc.
"We have a high
probability that the aircraft will be found at the southern end of that
long arc. We now know in considerable detail what almost
all of the search area looks like, we've mapped these in detail. We can
tow our sonar equipment about 100 meters (329 ft) from the ocean floor
in confidence that we won't run into any unexpected obstacles."
What happens if/when the wreckage is found?
Dolan says that it
largely depends on where, and how, the plane is found. The Australian
contingent, he says, is still discussing plans with their Malaysian
colleagues on how to proceed in the event of a positive identification
of plane wreckage.
"If you have a debris
field identified, to be able to know what to do with it requires careful
mapping and photographing, which will take up to a month," he says.
"Until we've got that largely completed we won't understand the sequence
of what we're able to do in relation to wreckage and human remains."
What happens if they don't find it within the current search timetable?
There is AUS $60 million
($52.8 mil) earmarked by the Australian government for mapping and
underwater search, and Australian expenditure is to be matched by
Malaysian government. It is a significant resource upon which to draw,
Dolan says.
However, "if at the end
of that we haven't found the aircraft, then it's really going to be a
matter for governments to decide what's next what resources they might
wish to supply and I can't really preempt what that discussion might
be."
A new air of "cautious
optimism" pervades the search teams, yet it seems that there is still
plenty of uncertainties to overcome before the MH370 mystery is finally
put to rest.
CNN's David Molko contributed to this report
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