無人潛航器再次下潛 搜尋失聯客機殘骸

An unmanned submersible is making a third attempt to find the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on the seabed of the southern Indian Ocean after earlier sorties ran into technical difficulties, authorities said Wednesday.

有關方面週三表示，在早些時候的搜尋行動遇到技術性問題後，一艘無人潛航器正第三次掃描南印度洋海牀，試圖找到馬來西亞航空(Malaysia Airlines) 370航班的殘骸。

The U.S. Navy's Bluefin-21 was forced to resurface to rectify a technical problem part of the way into its 20-hour mission, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is leading the multinational search operation, said in a statement. While aboard the Australian naval vessel Ocean Shield, its data was downloaded and found nothing related to the plane. The vehicle was later deployed and is continuing its underwater search.

澳大利亞聯合機構協調中心(Joint Agency Coordination Centre)在一份聲明中稱，此前美國海軍“藍鰭-21”(Bluefin-21)潛航器在執行20小時搜尋任務的途中被迫浮上水面，糾正遇到的一個技術性問題。不過，“藍鰭-21”上的數據已經被下載，未找到與失聯客機相關的物體。該潛航器之後重新入水，繼續海底搜尋工作。

It was the second such setback in an underwater search that began Monday. After completing about six hours of its first underwater search Monday, the submersible reached its operating depth limit of about 3 miles, and its built-in safety feature returned it to the surface, underscoring just how difficult its mission is. That search also found no evidence of the missing jet.

這已經是海底搜尋工作週一啓動以來第二次受挫。在週一完成了約六個小時的首次海底搜尋行動之後，“藍鰭-21”潛航器達到了約3英里（約合4.8公里）的最大下潛深度，其內置的安全設備啓動使其浮出水面，這凸顯了此次任務的艱難程度。週一的搜尋行動也未能發現與失聯客機相關的證據。

The search effort's primary goal remains recovering the Boeing 777's 'black box' flight-data and cockpit-voice recorders. However, authorities in change of the recovery operation decided earlier this week to move to the submersible as it seemed increasingly likely the batteries powering the emergency locaters were dead and devices looking for 'pings' would be useless.

此次搜尋行動的首要目標仍然是打撈這架失聯波音(Boeing) 777客機的“黑匣子”飛行數據和駕駛艙語音記錄器。不過，負責此次打撈行動的有關方面本週早些時候決定使用無人潛航器，因爲黑匣子電池電量耗盡的可能性似乎越來越大，繼續探測脈衝信號將無法起到任何作用。

The submersible is targeting an area where a black box locator device last week picked up the strongest in a series of electronic signals that authorities believe may have come from the missing plane.

該潛航器正鎖定一個目標區域，上週黑匣子定位儀探測到的一系列有關方面認爲可能來自失聯飛機黑匣子的電子信號中，該區域的信號最強。

'There are a couple of areas of interest but the one we are going to search first is the ones with the strongest indications,' said U.S. Navy Capt. Mark Matthews, who is coordinating the underwater search from Perth, in Western Australia state.

美國海軍上尉馬修斯(Mark Matthews)說，有幾個區域受到關注，但他們率先搜尋的是探測到最強信號的區域。馬修斯在西澳大利亞州的珀斯協調水下搜尋。

A separate air and sea search of the ocean surface for plane debris continued Wednesday, with 11 military aircraft, three civil aircraft and 11 ships visual searching about 21,000 square miles of ocean.

另外，空中和海上對海面飛機殘骸的搜尋週三繼續進行。11架軍用飛機、3架民用飛機和11艘船舶肉眼搜索海面大約21,000平方英里（約合54,390平方公里）的面積。

Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, who is leading the multinational search, said Monday that within three days, search crews will complete the search for floating material. After that, he said that portion of the operation may be called off.

負責牽頭多國搜索行動的澳大利亞空軍上將休斯敦(Angus Houston)週一表示，搜尋隊員將在三天內完成對漂浮物的搜尋。他說，之後這部分行動可能會結束。

Simon Boxall, an oceanographer at the University of Southampton in the U.K., said that strong currents in the search are could have taken surface debris more than 600 miles from the original impact site.

英國南安普頓大學(University of Southampton)海洋學家博克索爾(Simon Boxall)表示，搜尋過程中的強大洋流可能將海面殘骸帶至距原始撞擊地點逾600英里（約合966公里）的地方。