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A robotic submarine has resumed its search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight on the seabed of the southern Indian Ocean, the BBC reported.

The mini-sub was deployed late on Tuesday after data analysis from its first aborted mission drew a blank, officials said.

Flight MH370 went missing on 8 March with 239 people on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with it over the South China Sea.

Based on satellite data, officials believe it ended its flight thousands of kilometres off course, in seas west of the Australian city of Perth.

However, so far not a single piece of debris from the jet has been found.

On Monday, the US Navy's Bluefin-21 robotic submarine was sent on its first mission to search the sea floor for wreckage after signals believed to be consistent with "black box" flight recorders were detected.

But the drone exceeded its operating limit of 4,500m (15,000ft) and built-in safety features returned it to the surface.

"The autonomous underwater vehicle was again deployed last night (Tuesday) from ADV (Australian Defence Vessel) Ocean Shield," the Joint Agency Co-ordination Centre (JACC) said.

"The data from Bluefin-21's first mission has been downloaded and analysed. No objects of interest were found," the JACC added.

The 5m-long Bluefin-21 can create a sonar map of the sea floor.

The US Navy has estimated that it could take the unmanned submarine from six weeks to two months to scan the search zone.