Mon, Jun 08, 2009
Mini-Sub Has Made Multiple Dives on Titanic
A 26-foot-long French submarine is
being rushed to the likely site where Air France Flight 447
impacted the Atlantic Ocean a week ago, in hopes of locating the
Airbus A330's cockpit voice and flight data recorders. Finding the
black boxes is crucial to determining the cause of the in-flight
breakup of the aircraft.
According to Discovery News, the Nautile, and her mother ship
Pourquoi Pas? (Why Not?) were pulled from a research mission to
help in the search. "The priority for us is to find the black
boxes," said Vincent Rigaud, head of the French marine research
institute Ifremer's underwater system department. "We will do
everything we can to find them."
The topography in the area where Flight 447 went down in as much
as 13,000 feet of water is mountainous, and the debris field could
be very large given the nature of the accident. Nautile has made
numerous dives on the North Atlantic wreck of Titanic, and its
crews are used to operating in those kinds of conditions. Nautile
carries a three-person crew, and is equipped with multiple cameras
and panoramic sonar to help locate the devices. If they're found,
robotic arms will be used to pick them up off the ocean floor.
Nautile has been used in aircraft recovery operations in the
past.
But Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the French accident
investigation agency BEA, remains skeptical that the recorders will
ever be found. Multiple factors can affect the locator signals
emitted by the devices, including water temperature, density, and
salinity.
Pourquie Pas? and Nautile are expected to be on site by
Wednesday or Thursday of this week.
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