Underwater vehicle deployed to search for missing plane
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 15, 2014
The autonomous underwater vehicle was deployed last night from the Ocean Shield, the Joint Agency Coordination Center (JACC) said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is currently being extracted and analysed," the JACC said.
Up to 11 aircraft and 11 ships will assist in Tuesday's search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, the statement said.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totaling about 62,063 square kilometers on Tuesday. The center of the search areas lies some 2,170 kilometers northwest of Perth.
After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded the operating depth limit of 4,500 meters and its built- in safety feature returned it to the surface, said the JACC.
"The six hours of data gathered by the autonomous underwater vehicle is currently being extracted and analyzed," the JACC confirmed.
The JACC also confirmed that Bluefin-21 is planned to redeploy later Tuesday when weather conditions permit.
The weather forecast for Tuesday is south easterly winds with scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms, sea swells up to two meters and visibility of five kilometers, said the statement.
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