Amazing Project

Today it was announced that the tail section of the Air France Air Bus that crashed in the Atlantic while headed from Brazil to Paris had been found. Pictures were shown to the media by French officials and the accompanying video was truly amazing. With this find, along with 15 more bodies, officials now have a tough area to focus their underwater sonar search. I remember reading about the underwater sonar sled when Robert Ballard was searching for the Titanic in 1985. The sled is dragged underwater by a tugboat in a grid pattern. It then bounces sonar signals off the ocean bottom at a steady rate, resulting in the sonar images being recorded in the on board computers in the tugboat. In the Titanic search, a sonar image in the shape of a ship's boiler was recorded; a quick reference of the shipbuilder's blueprints revealed the type and size boilers built into the luxury liner. Today's find will establish a search grid to look for the flight recorder box. The search area is an underwater mountain range, with high peaks and valleys that have been measured as far down as 18000 feet. An accompanying deep diving submerge able sub is also being brought in in case it should be needed to go down farther that humans can dive. Once the Titanic was located 2 1/2 miles, down, this mini sub was utilized to go down and verify the find.