Bluefin-21 AUV is currently completing mission 13 in the underwater search area. The robotic mini-submarine has now completed approximately 95 per cent of the focused underwater search area but no contacts of interest have been found till now, said the Joint Agency Coordination Centre (JACC) which is leading the search for the lost plane.
The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of 10 km radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection which occurred on 8 April.
Possible promising leads have turned out to be false alarms for weeks in the lengthy search for the Boeing 777-200 which disappeared mid-flight on March 8 with 239 people, including five Indians onboard. A major challenge that has complicated the search is floating garbage in the ocean.
Other objects spotted in the Indian Ocean earlier turned out to be trash, jellyfish and fishing gear.
Australia has indicated that the approach to the search might be revised with more powerful underwater vehicles if Bluefin's search yields no results.
It is mulling deploying a more powerful system that tracked the Titanic 29 years ago to locate the wreckage of the plane.
