The Sundarban
December 3, 2025
2 min read
Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAmTexas-based mostly totally totally agency Ocean Infinity will ship swarms of autonomous underwater autos into the southern Indian Ocean in a high-likelihood strive to stumble upon this lacking jet
By Eric Sullivan edited by Claire Cameron
ROB GRIFFITH/POOL/AFP through Getty Pictures
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Malaysia is restarting the search for the lacking Malaysia Airways Flight MH370. The nation is sending ships and robots into one among the planet’s loneliest stretches of ocean within the hope of fixing one among aviation’s most haunting mysteries.
The Boeing 777 airplane vanished in 2014 with 239 other folks onboard. Starting on December 30, the Texas-based mostly totally totally seabed-mapping agency Ocean Infinity will teach 55 days sweeping a 15,000-sq.-kilometer (about 5,800-sq.-mile) swath of the southern Indian Ocean that investigators specialise in may per chance perchance well protect the jet’s wreckage.
It’s a high-stakes mission: the “no procure, no price” deal design Malaysia may per chance perchance well pay Ocean Infinity up to $70 million but perfect if the agency produces substantive wreckage. Officials are keeping the categorical aim zone a secret yet recount it’s according to satellite “handshake” tracking information and painstaking reconstructions of how dozens of particles fragments may per chance perchance well need drifted across the Indian Ocean before they washed onshore.
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The firm is leaning on a extra feeble generation of ocean skills: largely uncrewed flooring vessels coordinating swarms of autonomous underwater autos that can flit a pair of tens of meters above the seabed and draw terrain down to a depth of practically 6,000 meters with multibeam sonar, sub-bottom profilers and high-resolution imaging. Ocean Infinity says its upgraded plan can conceal extra flooring at elevated resolution and with a smaller carbon footprint than veteran learn about fleets.
The recent search comes after years of taking a detect in ineffective. From 2014 to 2017, Malaysia, Australia and China searched 120,000 sq. kilometers of seafloor at a price of roughly $155 million (extra than $200 million today). In 2018 Ocean Infinity scanned extra than 100,000 extra sq. kilometers. None of those campaigns found the foremost wreckage or any victims. Correct three confirmed objects of hover possess ever been recovered.
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