Bluefin submersible ends first searching mission early

An underwater vehicle has been deployed on its first mission to look for possible wreckage of missing Flight MH370. The Bluefin-21 was forced to return to the surface earlier than planned.  [Special coverage]

Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Center says the autonomous underwater vehicle was deployed on Monday night from the Naval ship Ocean Shield. After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded the operating depth limit of 4,500 meters and its built- in safety feature returned it to the surface. The data gathered is currently being extracted and analyzed.

The JACC has confirmed that its planning to redeploy the submersible later on Tuesday, when weather conditions permit. It's now 39 days since the Beijing-bound plane vanished after taking off from Kuala Lumpur, with 239 people on board. Up to 11 aircraft and 11 ships will assist in Tuesday's search. Chinese planes will suspend searches for one day.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has planned a visual search area totalling about 62 thousand square kilometers on Tuesday, with the center of the search area lying more than 21 hundred kilometers northwest of Perth.