When thinking of aviation pioneers and mysterious disappearances, Amelia Earhart quickly springs to mind. On July 2, 1937, Ms. Earhart's Lockheed Model 10-E Electra aircraft vanished while she was attempting to fly around the world-the first such attempt in history. She was accompanied only by her navigator Fred Noonan, and they are believed to have crash-landed in the Pacific ocean. Although there are numerous facets of Ms. Earhart's disappearance that are still a mystery today, none are more mysterious than the actual location of her airplane.
The last radio transmission of Ms. Earhart and Mr. Noonan is one of the most significant and concrete pieces of evidence associated with the disappearance. Today, Dr. Robert Ballard, is hoping to use the coordinates from that transmission, in conjunction with a new piece of equipment, to finally locate the missing plane.
Dr. Ballard is a deep-sea explorer with an impressive track record. He and his crew were successful in their search for the sunken R.M.S Titanic, as well as other lost sunken ships. Dr. Ballard is now planning to employ the services of a Bathymetric Explorer and Navigator or BEN, an autonomous surface vehicle, ASV for short, to map the ocean floor and help target areas for dives with remotely operated vehicles in order to locate any existing debris of Ms. Earhart's plane.
The ASV was developed by the University of New Hampshire's Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and has the ability to explore depths that are too deep for divers as well as areas too shallow for previously utilized equipment-such as Dr. Ballard's EV Nautilus.
BEN's seafloor mapping systems include a Kongsberg EM2040P multibeam echo-sounder and Applanix POS/MV navigation system, which enables it to make 3D topographic and acoustic backscatter maps of the seafloor.
Earhart's last transmission was believed to have been made near the island of Nikumaroro, in the western Pacific Ocean. However, no aircraft was spotted during the Navy's surveying of the island. It is believed that the plane may have slipped off surrounding coral reefs and sunk too much deeper depths.
UNH Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping has developed mission planning and so-called "back-seat-driver" control software designed specifically for piloting BEN during the seafloor mapping mission. BEN was manufactured by ASV Global, in a design collaboration with the UNH Center.
