The U.S. Navy’s pinger locator aboard the Australian vessel Ocean Shield has positively identified pings from the MH370 flight recorders. Earlier reports from a Chinese vessel some 600 kilometers south were greeted with skepticism. The Ocean Shield has, on multiple occasions, heard the pinger and has narrowed the search area.

Congratulations to the entire team, from the analysts who deciphered the satellite data putting the pinger locator in the right vicinity, to the personnel operating the Ocean Shield and pinger locator. One of the talented technicians aboard the Ocean Shield is Curt Newport who is best known for finding and recovering Gus Grissom’s Mercury space capsule located in the deep ocean off Florida.

Brilliant job!

Phase II will begin soon with deploying autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to the sea floor equipped with side scan sonar to locate the debris. More on these autonomous robots and their sonars in our next post.

© Copyright 2014 Vincent Capone

Missed our first post in this series?
Learn about the steps required in searching for MH370’s black boxes here.