Australia and New Zealand have today found a new lead in relation to the hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370 which has now been missing for almost two weeks, and it’s dumping a whole lot of maritime tech on the situation to try and determine whether it’s credible.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
This morning, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) was handed new satellite images taken by the Australian Geospatial Intelligence Organisation (AGO).
The AGO has spent the week retasking loads of commercial satellites capable of taking high resolution images of the Australian search corridor, and turned up new evidence that indicates a potential piece of wreckage in an area South-by-South-West of the Western Australian coastline.
The search area. Credit: ABC News 24
Over the next few hours, more search and rescue jets will arrive on scene, including RAAF Orion search aircraft, an Orion search plane from New Zealand and a US Air Force plane.
RAAF Orion Credit: RAAF
An RAAF C-130 Hercules is also being tasked to the search area to drop marker buoys around the site. Those buoys will be used to track water movement, and the data will then be used to generate a drift model so that the wreckage can be tracked in the days ahead.
A merchant ship is in the area, followed by the HMAS Success which will search the area and recover any wreckage of what might be Flight 370.
The AMSA is tempering expectations, however, saying that the images may not be of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The officials did add, however, that they still have grave fears for the flight.