Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette The Armada 8 autonomous vessel is being used by researchers to conduct a high-resolution sonar search for a plane that disappeared while conducting atmospheric research over Lake Superior in 1968.

HOUGHTON — A plane on a routine run to collect atmospheric data vanished over Lake Superior in 1968, leaving only the occasional sighting of debris over the next few decades to indicate what had happened.

Monday, researchers from the Great Lakes Smart Ships Coalition gathered to launch the autonomous surface vessel they hope will finally find the wreckage.

Crews will map and explore Lake Superior using Ocean Infinity’s Armada 8 (A8), which will use an ultra-high-resolution bathymetric sonar system to search for the National Center for Atmospheric Research plane. The 8-meter A8 vessel is located at the GLRC through an industry-university partnership with Michigan Tech.

The project is put on by the Great Lakes Smart Ships Coalition, which is working on autonomous technologies within marine environments. It includes more than 60 universities, state and federal agencies, private and nonprofit companies and international organizations.

“The autonomous surface vessel will allow us to do high-precision surveying of the lake bed today, to try to find a plane wreck and to solve a 55-year-old mystery, but also to provide research and information that can be used for bathymetric data, archaeological research and a range of other applications,” said David Naftzger, executive director of Great Lakes St. Lawrence Governors and Premiers. “This mission is just the beginning.”

The project is the first of numerous tests of the technology that will be used to show the ways autonomous technology can be used in the Great Lakes. The operators will be demonstrating the system next week in Traverse City, said Tim Havens, director of the Great Lakes Research Center.

“We’re just really excited about this project that is about to start, and this project also really exemplifies the type of work that the Great Lakes Research Center and Michigan Tech does, which is to combine together multiple partners, multiple institutions, technology development with our students and our faculty and our professional researchers to solve high impact problems,” he said.

The organizers are working with Great Lakes archaeologists and will also share their data with the public to allow for broader uses. That is in line with the objectives of Lakebed 2030, a conference focused on collecting high-resolution mapping and bathymetry data, and cataloging and sharing new and existing lake bed information.

Creating a high-resolution map of the bottom of Great Lakes will conservatively cost about $200 million, said Travis White, research engineer at the Great Lakes Research Center. Beyond preserving cultural assets, the project could also help with navigation, safety, commerce, and even just pushing the technology forward.

“Where all this may all be heading in a few years time is potentially looking at something like this ASV being capable to go out over the horizon with folks here at this facility or elsewhere, potentially across the world, operating it persistently for days or weeks on end in order to complete that mission,” he said.

The first test is finding the plane. Two pilots and a graduate student were aboard when it was sent out to collect data on Oct. 23, 1968 on water radiation and temperature. It flew in a grid pattern at low altitude, last making contact with the Houghton County Memorial Airport about 1:30 p.m., said Wayne Lusardi, state maritime archaeologist with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

That was the last word from the airplane. The U.S. Coast Guard and other agencies launched searches off the west coast of the shore of the Keweenaw Peninsula for two weeks, finding nothing. Two days later, two seat cushions washed ashore near Freda and Beacon Hill. Another piece of aluminum with insulation washed ashore near Freda.

The next year, another NCAR pilot employed Michigan Tech students to help with a survey using the sonar technology of the time, mapping Lake Superior from Misery Bay to the Portage Lake Shipping Canal. The month-long search included sending divers down to investigate acoustic anomalies in shallower depths and dropdown television cameras in deeper water. That, too, found nothing.

More pieces of wreckage have come ashore over the next few decades, most concentrated around the Freda and Red Ridge areas, Lusardi said.

This week’s search area is based on historic reference to the Coast Guard and NCAR searches, initial meteorological reports from the time period of the accident, and drift studies to determine where the earliest debris might have originated.

“It will be a difficult search,” Lusardi said. “But unlike the 1969 survey, we have the technology today amassed right here and the experts to use that technology to make the best effort so far to come across some sort of positive conclusion with this search.”

The ASV is scanning about 1,000 feet of the lake bed at any given time. It will travel 3 to 4 knots, about a mile per hour, covering a search area 7 miles long and 3 miles wide.

“We anticipate at those speeds and all things cooperating, that’s about a three-and-a-half day mission,” White said.

The A8 was followed by Michigan Tech’s 22-foot chase boat and the R/V Soliton, which is used as a mobile command vessel.

Daily updates on the search will be posted on YouTube at noon, 2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. Tuesday through Friday. That can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SakgkrXD7U.