Deep Navigation: Sonar in Amelia Earhart Hunt
Deep Sea Vision is a company that utilizes autonomous underwater sonar imaging vehicles to conduct ocean floor surveys of minerals, habitats, pipe routes, and wreck hunting. They set out to find Amelia Earhart’s plane, and whether or not they succeeded depends on how much you think this image looks like a Lockheed 10-E Electra captured with sonar.
So first, how does sonar work? Sound Navigation and Ranging works by emitting a sound pulse and measuring the time it takes for the sound echoes to bounce off objects and return to the transducer. Deep Sea Vision uses Synthetic Aperture Sonar to produce a higher-resolution image. SAS does not wait for a pulse to return before sending the next pulse. SAS continuously sends pulses, merging the results to form a more detailed image.
“A SAS beam is like a “funnel” that overlaps with itself multiple times to achieve highly detailed images. As a result, synthetic aperture sonar can map a site at 30 times the resolution of traditional side scan sonar,” NOAA says.
Deep Sea Vision’s hunt may extenuate a theory proposed by Liz Smith called Dateline theory. Smith Theroizes Amelia’s Navigator Fred Nooman may have…
