Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 mysteriously disappeared on 8 March 2014 — nearly two years ago, if you can believe it. And while Australian researchers still haven’t found the plane, they recently discovered a shipwreck dating back to the 19th century.
The Australians discovered an anomaly on the floor of the Indian Ocean back in December and deployed an unmanned submarine on January 2 to take high-resolution sonar pictures, like the one you see above. In fact, this is the second 19th century shipwreck discovered by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in the past two years during their efforts to find the missing Malaysia Airlines plane.
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had 239 passengers aboard and is believed to have crashed into the Indian Ocean somewhere west of Australia. No one is quite sure of the reason for the crash, though a wing segment from the Boeing 777 was finally found washed up on the island of La Réunion back in July of 2015.
We’ll likely never know the name of the newly discovered lonely ship that’s currently slumbering at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Those kinds of endeavours take time and money, which is currently only being spent on finding MH370. So far, the Australian government has spent over $76 million looking for the plane.
Since the 2014 crash, China, Malaysia and Australia have all agreed to search an area covering roughly 120,000 square kilometres of the Indian Ocean. They have covered about 80,000 square kilometres so far, though Australian officials are somewhat frustrated that they seem to be footing most of the bill.
Authorities say that they will likely give up on the search sometime within the next six months if their efforts continue to fail. But who knows how many 19th century shipwrecks they will find by that time? At the going rate, there’s a good chance they will find at least one more.
[Australian Transport Safety Bureau via AP]