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By Lincoln Feast and Byron Kaye SYDNEY/PERTH, Australia (Reuters) - A U.S. Navy underwater drone sent to search for a missing Malaysian jetliner on the floor of the Indian Ocean had its first mission cut short after exceeding its 4.5 km (2.8 mile) depth limit, Australian search authorities said on Tuesday. The launch of the Blue-fin 21 autonomous underwater vehicle on Monday marked a new phase in the six week search for Malaysia Airlines MH370 which disappeared on March 8 and is presumed to have crashed thousands of kilometers (miles) off course with the loss of all 239 people on board. "After completing around six hours of its mission, Bluefin-21 exceeded its operating depth limit of 4,500 meters and its built in safety feature returned it to the surface," the Australian agency coordinating the search and recovery operation said. "The six hours of data gathered by the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle is currently being extracted and analyzed." Malaysian authorities have still not ruled out mechanical problems as causing the plane's disappearance, but say evidence suggests it was deliberately diverted from its scheduled route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.More...