The French ship steaming across the Atlantic on a long-shot mission to find the undersea wreckage of Air France Flight 447 is carrying some of the world’s most cutting-edge equipment.
PHOTOS: Air France Flight 447 Search & Rescue
The 300-foot-long Pourquoi Pas, which is a week’s sailing time away from the crash scene, carries two deep-water submarines and is packed with ultra-high-tech underwater listening and search devices. Officials hope the equipment will lead to retrieval of the plane’s black boxes, which are believed to be resting on the ocean floor 15,000 feet or more beneath the surface.
The black boxes on the Airbus A330 are supposed to “ping” for 30 days, and withstand ocean depths of 20,000 feet, said George Bibel, author of “Beyond the Black Box: The Forensics of Airplane Crashes.”
The Pourquoi Pas, jointly operated by the French Navy and the French Research Institute for Exploitation of the Sea, will deploy a super-sensitive hydrophonic microphone capable of hearing the pings, which are as loud as an electric drill.
The pings are audible a mile from the boxes. But the noise could be muted by mud, debris, or water currents.
Also, mountainous underwater terrain might block the noise.
Once the pinging is detected, the Pourquoi Pas (which translates to “Why Not”) will be ready to deploy its mini-subs — Victor 6000 and Nautile — which can search to a depth of about 18,000 feet.
The plane’s remains are thought to be 15,000 feet down, though the water in the area can reach 22,950 feet deep.
Victor 6000 is remote-controlled via a tether cable attached to its mother ship.
It has eight cameras, eight searchlights and two remote-control arms each able to lift 220 pounds.
Nautile is a 25-foot-long deep-ocean submarine that can carry a three-man crew jammed into a cabin just six feet around.
It’s built with a strong and light titanium alloy designed to withstand water pressure of 7,000 pounds per square inch.
The French say it can reach 97 percent of the ocean floor.
Nautile’s crew can peer outside through three 4 3/4-inch portholes, and could retrieve the black boxes — which are really bright orange — with two remote-control arms.
The boxes would likely explain the tragedy.
“They almost always get something out of them,” said Bibel.
“But can they find them?”