The first submarine mission to find the wreckage of the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had to be aborted early after exceeding its depth limit.

The autonomous Bluefin-21 submarine was deployed in the southern Indian Ocean, where signals from the black box are believed to have been recorded, but it only has a maximum operating depth of 4,500m and was brought back to the surface six hours into its 18 hour mission.

The Australian Join Agency Coordination Centre said in a statement:

After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded its operating depth limit of 4,500 metres and its built in safety feature returned it to the surface.

The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is currently being extracted and analysed.

Bluefin-21 is planned to redeploy later today when weather conditions permit.

The Bluefin-21 transmits an active pulse which produces a high resolution three-dimensional map of the sea floor and could offer the opportunity to detect the aircraft wreckage on the ocean floor.

Up to nine military aircraft, two civil aircraft, and 11 ships will be taking part in the mission to find for the missing plane today, with the visual search area covering approximately 62,063 square kilometres.