Investigators Suspect MH370's Black-Box Batteries Have Died: Report

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Cheryl Mierzwa, left, systems engineer for Bluefin Robotics, helps guide a submarine onto the deck of a boat in Quincy, Mass., Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Bluefin Robotics shipped a version of their submarine to help locate the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, by using its side-scan sonar.

Image: Scott Eisen/Associated Press

By Andrew Freedman2014-04-13 15:35:15 UTC

The multinational flotilla scouring the seas to the west of Perth, Australia for signs of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have not heard any electronic pings from the plane's cockpit voice or data recorders since April 8, suggesting the batteries on these devices may have run out, according to a new report.

Manufactured by Honeywell, battery-operated acoustic beacons attached to the black boxes were designed to send out electronic signals for about 30 days after entering the water. As of Sunday, it has now been 37 days since Flight 370, a Boeing 777-200, went missing during a late-night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

See also: Scientists: Search Crews Unlikely to Confuse Black Box 'Pings' With Whale Sounds

The battery life of these devices can last longer than 30 days, but the signals may become more faint and intermittent as the battery dies out, making it more difficult for investigators to find them, according to Honeywell. The beacons are about 4 inches wide and resemble “a roll of silver dollars” bolted to the recorders, Steven Brecken, a Honeywell spokesperson, told Mashable.

Investigators have been using specially designed sensors to detect the telltale pings from the black boxes in the deep waters of the southern Indian Ocean. The Ocean Shield, an Australian ship, has been dragging a U.S. Navy sensor, which had previously detected multiple signals that matched the black-box sounds. That ship has not heard any such indications since Tuesday, the AP reported.

The search areas for Malaysian Airlines Flight 370.

Image: Joint Agency Coordination Center

The beacons are designed to send out one signal per second at a frequency of about 37.5 kHz, which can be distinguished from other marine sounds, such as whales. Investigators have said that pings picked up by the search team have been "consistent with" the black-box transmissions.

"We're now into Day 37 of this tragedy," aviation expert Geoffrey Thomas told the AP. "The battery life on the beacons is supposed to last 30 days. We're hoping it might last 40 days. However, it's been four or five days since the last strong pings. What they're hoping for is to get one more, maybe two more pings so they can do a triangulation of the sounds and try and narrow the [search] area."

Once investigators determine that it is highly unlikely that any further sounds from the black boxes will be detected, they will have to resort to exploring the sea floor several miles down for signs of any wreckage — a laborious process that could take anywhere from months to several years, depending on the size of the search zone. The black-box pings have been the best chance for investigators to narrow the search area, given the lack of radar data pinpointing the plane's location at the time it disappeared.

The current underwater search zone measures 500 square miles, which is about the size of Los Angeles, according to the AP. The submersible that will be used to investigate the seafloor, known as Bluefin 21 and manufactured by Bluefin Robotics of Massachusetts, has a maximum depth of 15,000 feet, which is about the same depth as in the search area.

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Topics: black box, Malaysia Airlines, flight data recorder, Malaysia, Malaysia flight 370, US & World, World