China satellite finds object near search area
Print Edition
A SATELLITE image released by China yesterday offers the latest sign that wreckage from a Malaysia Airlines plane lost for more than two weeks could be in a remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean where planes and ships have been searching for three days.
China’s State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said on its website that a Chinese satellite took an image of an object 22 meters by 13 meters around noon on Tuesday. The image location was about 120 kilometers south of where an Australian satellite viewed two objects two days earlier. The larger object was about as long as the one the Chinese satellite detected.
“The news that I just received is that the Chinese ambassador received a satellite image of a floating object in the southern corridor and they will be sending ships to verify,” Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters yesterday, who was handed a note during his daily press briefing on the international search for MH370 which vanished two weeks ago.
Hishammuddin wrapped up the briefing early “to follow this lead.” Chinese, British and Australian naval ships are already steaming to the search area and the new image will provide welcome backing for the decision to deploy so many resources without confirmation that the objects are pieces of wreckage.
The latest image is another clue in the baffling search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which dropped off air traffic control screens on March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.
After about a week of confusion, authorities said pings sent by the Boeing 777 for several hours after it disappeared indicated that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia, or a southern corridor that stretches toward Antarctica.
The discovery of the two objects by the Australian satellite led several countries to send planes and ships to a stretch of the Indian Ocean about 2,500 kilometers southwest of Australia. One of the objects spotted in the earlier satellite imagery was described as 24 meters in length and the other was 5 meters. But three days of searching have produced nothing.
Even if both satellites detected the same object, it may be unrelated to the plane. One possibility is that it could have fallen off a cargo vessel.
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the currents in the area typically move at about one meter per second although can sometimes move faster. Based on the typical speed, a current could move a floating object about 173km in two days.
Warren Truss, Australia’s acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is abroad, said before the new satellite data was announced that a complete search could take a long time.
“It is a very remote area, but we intend to continue the search until we’re absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile — and that day is not in sight,” he said.
“If there’s something there to be found, I’m confident that this search effort will locate it,” Truss said from the base near Perth that is serving as a staging area for search aircraft.
Aircraft involved in the search include two ultra-long-range commercial jets and four P3 Orions, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.
But because the search area is a four-hour flight from land, the Orions can search for about only two hours before they must fly back. The commercial jets can stay for five hours before heading back to the base.
Two merchant ships were in the area, and the HMAS Success, a navy supply ship, had also joined the search.
Malaysian authorities have not ruled out any possible explanation for what happened to the jet but have said the evidence so far suggests it was deliberately turned back across Malaysia to the Strait of Malacca, with its communications systems disabled. They are unsure what happened next.
Scott Hamilton, managing director of US-based aviation consultancy Leeham Co, said the investigation would simply have to continue for as long as it takes.
“This is, in all probability, a criminal act, and thereby presumed murder of more than 230 people,” Hamilton said.
“Worse, if this is some kind of terror event that is a precursor to something bigger in the future, authorities will presumably do all they can to make this determination and work to prevent it — whatever ‘it’ is,” he added.
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