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'We've Got to Get Lucky': Search for Jet's Black Boxes Intensifies
Investigators Will Now Focus on Finding Jet's Black Boxes
The announcement that the missing
Malaysia Airlines jet is believed to have plunged in the southern Indian
Ocean sets off a new phase of the search for the Boeing 777 as
authorities pivot to a gut-wrenching recovery mission.
Search
operations off the coast of Australia were suspended just after
daybreak Tuesday (local time) due to bad weather, authorities said — but
when the mission resumes, investigators will be in a race against time
to find the doomed airplane's voice and data recorders before the
battery-powered underwater signal they transmit is silenced forever.
The so-called "black boxes" may
help authorities figure out why MH370 crashed into the Indian Ocean on
what should have been a routine flight to Beijing. But the clock is
ticking: The battery life of the "pinger" in the devices may have as
little as two weeks left.
"You
really need these black boxes to tell you what went on in the airplane,"
Robert Hager, who covered aviation for NBC News for 25 years, said on
TODAY early Monday.
Crews trying
to track down the signal will use a high-tech listening device loaned
by the U.S. Navy. One of the Navy's Towed Pinger Locators (TPL) — a
sophisticated underwater microphone shaped like a stingray — was already
on its way to the region and is expected to arrive in Australia on
Wednesday morning.
The precise location of the
airplane remained unknown Monday — although Malaysian authorities have
said a British satellite company has pinpointed its last position in the
Indian Ocean, where several countries involved in the frantic search
have reported spotting floating debris.
But
naval officials emphasized that they were sending the device only as a
prudent step for “if or when” a debris field is found that could
substantially narrow the search area.
The 30-inch-long TPL is towed
behind a commercial vessel at slow speeds in a grid formation — and is
capable of detecting the faint "pings" down to a depth of roughly 20,000
feet, according to Jim Gibson, the general manager of Phoenix
International Holdings, Inc., the Navy's contractor for deep ocean
search and recovery equipment.
"Assuming
the pinger is working ... we can potentially hear a pinger up to about a
mile and in some cases up to two miles," said Gibson. "But there are a
lot of variables there — depth, whether the black box was buried, and a
whole host of other things."
Also
on Monday, the Pentagon said that in addition to the TPL, the Navy is
dispatching an unmanned "mini-sub" to assist in the search once an
approximate location for the downed airliner is established.
That
mini sub — an autonomous underwater vehicle manufactured by Bluefin
Robotics Corp. and equipped with side-scanning sonar an en echo sender —
can run for up to 20 hours at depths of 15-thousand feet.
Like
the TPL, the Bluefin is being shipped to Perth on a commercial aircraft
and should arrive off the coast of Australia at 9:45 a.m. Wednesday
local time, according to the Pentagon.
In addition to the U.S. Navy
equipment, an Australian Navy support vessel — the Ocean Shield — was en
route toward the search zone and was expected to arrive in three or
four days, a defense official told The Associated Press. That ship is
equipped with acoustic detection tools that can scour the sea for the
black boxes.
For the
investigators hunting for wreckage and debris, time is of the essence —
and a positive identification could be a veritable smoking gun.
"We've
got to get lucky," John Goglia, a former member of the National
Transportation Safety Board, told the AP. "It's a race to get to the
area in time to catch the black box pinger while it's still working." - The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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