It’s been over a decade since Malaysia Airlines flight 370 and the 239 souls on board vanished over the southern Indian Ocean. Years of extensive, international search efforts have failed to locate the plane, but an American tech company believes it could finally find it.
On Wednesday, the Malaysian Ministry of Transport announced that Ocean Infinity, a marine robotics firm based in Austin, Texas, will recommence seabed search operations for MH370 on December 30. The company will hunt for the plane intermittently over the course of 55 days, working within a “targeted area assessed to have the highest probability of locating the aircraft.” That area spans roughly 5,800 square miles (15,000 square kilometers).
Ocean Infinity signed a “no-find, no-fee” contract with the Ministry in March and will be paid $70 million if it recovers wreckage from MH370. This isn’t the first time the company has tried to find the plane; its initial search in 2018 turned up nothing. This time, Ocean Infinity will deploy a more advanced fleet of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs).
Gizmodo reached out to Ocean Infinity and the Malaysian Ministry of Transport for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
What happened to MH370?
The Boeing 777 embarked on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing on March 8, 2024, but never made it there. Shortly after takeoff, the plane disappeared from radar. Satellite data showed that MH370 deviated from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where investigators believe it crashed. All 227 passengers and 12 crew members are presumed dead.
In 2015 and 2016, pieces of debris from the plane washed ashore on the East African coast and Indian Ocean islands, but no other wreckage or bodies have been found. The prospect of recovering the plane’s two “black box” flight data recorders is a key motivator in the search for the rest of the aircraft, as they could provide critical information about the events that led up to the crash.
Ocean Infinity attempted another search for MH370 shortly after signing its contract with the Malaysian Ministry of Transport in March, but in April, the company’s efforts were halted by bad weather. Now, the search is back on. At the end of December, Ocean Infinity will return to the suspected crash site and use state-of-the-art technology to scour the seafloor for plane wreckage.
Diving back in
An offshore support vessel called Armada 7806 will serve as the primary platform for deploying Ocean Infinity’s search effort.
This ship is equipped with a fleet of 20-foot-long (6-meter-long) AUVs that are capable of operating independently of the support vessel and exploring depths of up to 19,700 feet (6,000 meters) for 100 hours at a time, Stefan B. Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, explained in an article for The Conversation.
“They are equipped with advanced sonar technology, including sidescan, synthetic aperture, multibeam and sub-bottom profiling sonar,” Williams wrote. These technologies play an essential role in object detection by using acoustic pulses to “look for echoes from the seafloor,” he explained. If one of these AUVs identifies a target of interest, it can use cameras and lights to take detailed images.
One major advancement Ocean Infinity has made since its 2018 search is demonstrating its ability to deploy multiple AUVs at their maximum depth simultaneously. This will significantly expand the coverage area and allow for a more efficient and comprehensive search, according to Williams.
If the company succeeds in finding more wreckage from MH370—or better yet, its long-sought-after black boxes—it would not only mark a major achievement for the young tech firm but could also offer closure to the many families affected by this tragedy.
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