NAVIGATOR SHIP WITH ROBOT BEGINS A-320 PLANE BLACK BOXES LIFTING
ITAR-TASS, Russia
May 16 2006
KRASNODAR, May 16 (Itar-Tass) – The Navigator special ship with a
robot on board put out to the Black Sea early on Tuesday in order to
launch the operation to lift from the seabed the flight data recorders
of the crashed A-320 airliner of Armenia’s Armavia company.
The vessel was in the designated area at 06:20, Moscow time and the
crew began the operation, Itar-Tass was told by telephone from the
Navigator.
The robot was installed on the ship on Monday. It was brought to
Sochi by the Kapitan Beklemishev scientific-research ship from
Novorossiisk. Last week specialists tested the robot in the area of
the Tonky cape just opposite Gelendzhik. According to the head of the
special ship’s crew, specialist of the Yuzhmorgeologiya federal state
institution Igor Lagoida, the apparatus was designed for lifting
geological specimens form the seabed and examining underwater oil
and natural gas pipelines. It is for the first time to fulfil the
task of lifting a plane’s black boxes.
The robot consists of three parts, the largest is a container with
control equipment. The next segment with photo and television equipment
will go to the bottom of the sea and examine it. The third device is
a hydraulic elevating manipulator working in all directions. It will
lift on board containers and possibly pieces of the wrecked plane if
they have a weight less than 12 kilogrammes.
According to captain of the Navigator Ivan Bezborodov, “The vessel has
a system of dynamic positioning that allows it to stay in a circle 10
metres in radius, which will make it possible for the robotic device
to work normally in deep sea.
The operation is expected to take three days.
Accoridng to available information, the plane’s flight data recorders
are at a depth of 496 metres, the distance between the recorders is
some five metres.
The airbus A-320 of the Armavia company fell into the Black Sea on
the night of May 3 during landing approach at the Sochi airport. The
catastrophe claimed the lives of 113 people.