【英语生活】蓝鳍-21将重启370航班搜寻工作 Underwater Drone to Restart Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Sea ...

A lone submersible will begin scanning the ocean floor for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 in an area next to where it previously failed to find any sign of the jet, as nations involved discuss ways to broaden the search in coming weeks.

The Bluefin-21, an underwater drone provided by the U.S. Navy, will commence its 17th mission once weather conditions improve, the Australian authority leading the search off the coast of Western Australia said Wednesday. Previous sorties in a 314 square kilometer (120 square mile) zone where a U.S. Navy listening device earlier picked up signals consistent with locator beacons on the aircraft's 'black box' flight recorders failed to find any trace of the plane.

An Australian air force plane is on standby in the Western Australian city of Perth, while a number of other military vessels and aircraft will return to their national duties, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said. They include a Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion, which will return to New Zealand Thursday after completing 27 missions estimated to have cost the small nation about 1.2 million New Zealand dollars (US$1 million.) Two U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon aircraft flying missions in search of debris on the ocean surface, along with the Navy ship Cesar Chavez, have also left the multinational operation, the U.S. Navy said in a statement Wednesday.

The hunt for the Boeing 777 jet moved from a perspective of days to one of months or maybe years earlier this week, as Australia gave up on finding wreckage in a narrow area of the southern Indian Ocean and said it would vastly expand the search area into deeper surrounding waters. The plane vanished from radar screens en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur on March 8. Investigators believe it diverted sharply from its original course and crashed into the Indian Ocean, far from any airport, when it ran out of fuel.

The search effort, now more than 50 days old, is set to move from sophisticated military hardware to one essentially led by private contractors with equipment that can scan trenches in the southern Indian Ocean thought to lie up to 7,000 meters below the sea surface. But it will take some time for commercial contracts to be agreed, and for new operators to reach the search area, hundreds of miles northwest of the Australian city of Perth.

参与马来西亚航空(Malaysia Airlines, 简称：马航) 370客机搜寻工作的各国正在讨论未来几周如何扩大搜寻范围。与此同时一架潜航器将开始在新的海域进行水下搜寻，此前该潜水器对相邻海域进行了搜寻，但未发现客机残骸的任何迹象。

牵头此次澳洲西部海域搜寻工作的澳大利亚当局周三称，一旦天气状况改善，美国海军提供的蓝鳍-21 (Bluefin-21)水下无人潜航器就将展开第17次水下搜寻。早些时候美国海军一侦听设备疑似探测到客机“黑匣子”发出的位置信号，蓝鳍-21随即对附近314平方公里（120平方英里）的海域进行搜寻，但未找到飞机的任何迹象。

澳大利亚联合机构协调中心(Joint Agency Coordination Centre)称，澳空军一架飞机待命于澳洲西部城市珀斯，与此同时众多其它海军舰船及飞机将恢复为本国服务的职责。这其中包括新西兰皇家空军(Royal New Zealand Air Force)的一架P-3“猎户座”(Orion)，该巡逻机将在周四完成第27次任务（估计已花费120万新西兰元（约合100万美元））后返回新西兰。美国海军周三在一份声明中称，美国两架负责在海面搜寻客机残骸的P-8波塞顿(Poseidon)巡逻机以及一艘“塞萨尔•查韦斯”(Cesar Chavez)舰船已不再参与多国搜救任务。

本周早些时候澳方放弃在南印度洋一片狭窄海域内找到客机残骸的希望，并表示将搜寻区域大幅扩大至周边更深的海域。3月8日这架波音(Boeing) 777客机在从吉隆坡飞往北京的途中从雷达屏上消失。调查人员相信该客机大幅偏离原定航线，并在耗尽航油后坠入南印度洋一片远离任何机场的海域。

搜索任务进行至今已有50多天，之后搜寻工作将从先进的军用设备转交给私人承包商来负责，这些承包商的设备可对南印度洋海面最深至七千米以下的海沟进行搜寻。相关商业合同的达成和新工作人员的部署到位都需要一些时间。搜寻海域位于珀斯西北数百英里的位置。