2014 came and has gone into history like so many others that have scaled and influenced our earth. There was a lot of lessons learnt but of note to the Geoinformation community is the Malaysian airline plane (MH 370) that disappeared and was presumed crashed into the Indian Ocean.
Yet as the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight 370 made clear, knowledge and access to information can be deceptive. After months of relentless searching, involving more than 40 ships and 39 aircraft from 12 countries, we know little more about the missing Boeing 777 than we did on the day it disappeared.
The sea, it turns out, isn't ours for the taking. Even if MH370 is eventually found, it has already reordered our views about geography, data and monitoring. Radar, computer tracking, X-rays, satellite imagery, listening apps: All have significant limits.
According to Wikipedia, the current phase of the search is a comprehensive search of the seafloor which began in October 2014; but preceded by a bathymetric survey of the search area since May 2014.
The two projects are expected to make up to 12 months to complete at a cost of AU$ 52m. The search has revealed the inadequacy of current technologies to collect data at the depths along the search route and as such have delayed the search work.
Some of the equipment to be used for the underwater search operates best when towed 200 m (650 ft) above the seafloor and is towed at the end of a 10 km (6 mi) cable. The water depth within the Indian Ocean ranges between 3,700 and 23,000 feet. Available bathymetric data for this region was of poor resolution, thus necessitating a bathymetric survey of the search area before the underwater phase began.
The underwater phase of the search uses three vessels equipped with towed deep water vehicles, which use side-scan sonar, multi-beam echo sounders, and video cameras to locate and identify aircraft debris.
As of 17 December 2014, over 11,000 km2 (4,200 sq mi) of seafloor has been searched and the bathymetric survey has mapped over 200,000 km2 (77,000 sq mi) of seafloor. Without significant delays, the priority underwater search area will be completed around May 2015.
(CNN) -- Just how hard is it to find a plane at the bottom of the ocean?
Imagine standing on a mountain top and trying to spot a suitcase on the ground below. Then imagine doing it in complete darkness. That's basically what crews searching for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have been trying to do for a month.(for months).
An unsolved mystery of such proportions, which defies our collective knowledge and best technology, is a shock to the system. It's as if our old concept of the unfathomable sea has suddenly been restored, forcing us to re-evaluate what we know and what can be known. How could 239 people disappear without a trace? All we know is that the answer almost certainly lies somewhere beneath the deep blue sea.
Though the oceans make up 70 percent of the planet’s surface, only about 5 percent has been mapped, which leaves about 65 percent of the world uncharted and unknown. The ocean is the last frontier of human empirical knowledge; even the contours on that eighth-grader’s globe are the product of a mix of scientific measurement, inference and conjecture.
Yet even Google’s new app for viewing ocean bottoms is limited by how little is documented there. It's a crucial gap when trying to find a lost plane. The Guardian in March quoted Malaysia’s acting transport minister saying the MH370 search area covered 2.24 million square nautical miles -- large enough to contain almost two billion Boeing 777s, encompassing about 1.5 percent of the world.
Finding the plane is daunting. Bringing it back from the deep will be even more difficult.
"At these depths ... there's no recovery like it," said Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
References
- MH370 Search Revives Age-Old Mystery In The Indian Ocean
By Alan Huffman
@alanhuffman1 a.huffman@ibtimes.com (www.ibtimes.com)
- How deep is deep? Imagining the MH370 search underwater
By Holly Yan and Ed Lavandera, CNN. (www.edition.cnn.com )
- Wikipedia
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