Over seven years after an IAF AN-32 aircraft went missing in 2016, scientists at the Chennai-based National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) stumbled upon its debris when they were testing the instruments of their newly-acquired autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) for seabed mapping in December.
It was during such a testing expedition undertaken by Research Vessel Sagar Nidhi on December 9-10 last year, about 310 km off the Chennai coast, the instruments on the AUV picked up some strong SONAR reflections from the seabed at a depth of 3,400 m.
