The search intensifies for Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 that is still missing 10 months after it took off in Kuala Lumpur. An Australian search coordinator confirmed Wednesday that a fourth search vessel is joining the search mission for the missing aircraft.
The new addition to the search team called the Fugro Supporter will join Fugro Equator and Fugro Discover to find the remains of the missing aircraft that inexplicably disappeared after it departed from Malaysia en route to Beijing, China. Fugro Supporter has a Kongsberg HUGIN 4500 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) that can be pre-recorded with an area where it should be focusing on its search mission.
"The AUV will be used to scan those portions of the search area that cannot be searched effectively by the equipment on the other search vessels," a representative from the the Joint Ahency Coordination Centre of Australia said.
Almost a year after the search for the missing Boeing 777 aircraft began, the mission is now focused on a new path located some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) west of Perth, Australia. The new area that is now being searched is a rocky, uncharted map that has a total of 60,000-square-kilometer (23,000-square-mile) patch of sea floor.
The new ship will be voyaging toward the western part of Australia sometime later this month to try to look for the missing Malaysian Airline plane. If the search mission goes smoothly, the new direction of the search is expected to be finished in May.
The aircraft possibly took with it all its 239 people when it suddenly went off the radar on March 8, 2014.
Malaysian Airlines had a bad year in 2014. After the Malaysian Airline Flight MH370 disappeared, another one from its fleet also encountered a fatal fate. Its Flight MH17 was shot down in a town over Ukraine on July 17, killing all the 298 people in the said flight.
