A 90-second stream of pings picked up by a device tethered to a ship in the Indian Ocean and a field of objects floating nearby offered investigators searching Saturday for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 the tantalizing hope that they may have caught a break.
“I have been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a Chinese ship in the search area,” Angus Houston, the chief coordinator of Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, said in a prepared statement.
“The characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box,” he said, adding that a number of white objects were sited about 56 miles (90 kilometers) away.
“However, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft,” the retired air chief marshal said.
Neither the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) nor the Australian Transport Safety Bureau can verify any connection to the missing aircraft, the statement said.
The RCC in Australia has spoken to the RCC in China and asked for any further relevant information, it said.
“The deployment of RAAF assets to the area where the Chinese ship detected the sounds is being considered,” he added, referring to the Royal Australian Air Force.
The state-run Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said a detector deployed by the Haixun 01 patrol ship picked up the signal around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.
That puts it about 1,020 miles (1,640 kilometers) west-northwest of Perth, Australia, between current and previous search zones, and about 220 miles (354 kilometers) south of the closest of the three areas searched Saturday, said Judson Jones, a meteorologist with CNN International.
A previous search area was 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of the area.
“It’s not the prime search area, but it’s not out of the question that this could possibly be from the black box,” said David Gallo, who is with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Also found Saturday — spotted by a Chinese air force search plane — were white objects floating near the search area, about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) from Perth, Xinhua said. Those were presumably the same objects cited by Houston.
Investigators have failed to link any of the many previous sightings of debris to the missing plane. But the proximity of the two finds raised hopes that this time might be different.
The ship first detected a signal Friday but couldn’t record it because the signal stopped abruptly, a Shanghai-based Communist Party newspaper said. The signal detected Saturday, the Jiefang Daily said, occurred at 3:57 p.m. Beijing time (3:57 a.m. ET) and lasted about a minute and a half. It was not clear whether the signal had anything to do with the missing plane.
A China Central Television correspondent aboard the Haixun-01 (pronounced “high shuen”) reported that the 37.5 kHz signal was detected for a minute and a half.
The signal “is the standard beacon frequency” for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom.
“They’re identical.”
The frequency was chosen for use in the recorders “to give that standout quality that does not get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the ocean.”
But he said he would like to see more evidence. “I’d like to see some additional assets on site quickly — maybe some sonobuoys,” he said, referring to 5-inch-long (13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships.
And he said he was puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon.
Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane.
“I have been advised that a series of sounds have been detected by a Chinese ship in the search area,” Angus Houston, the chief coordinator of Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Centre, said in a prepared statement.
“The characteristics reported are consistent with the aircraft black box,” he said, adding that a number of white objects were sited about 56 miles (90 kilometers) away.
“However, there is no confirmation at this stage that the signals and the objects are related to the missing aircraft,” the retired air chief marshal said.
Neither the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) nor the Australian Transport Safety Bureau can verify any connection to the missing aircraft, the statement said.
The RCC in Australia has spoken to the RCC in China and asked for any further relevant information, it said.
“The deployment of RAAF assets to the area where the Chinese ship detected the sounds is being considered,” he added, referring to the Royal Australian Air Force.
The state-run Chinese news agency, Xinhua, said a detector deployed by the Haixun 01 patrol ship picked up the signal around 25 degrees south latitude and 101 degrees east longitude.
That puts it about 1,020 miles (1,640 kilometers) west-northwest of Perth, Australia, between current and previous search zones, and about 220 miles (354 kilometers) south of the closest of the three areas searched Saturday, said Judson Jones, a meteorologist with CNN International.
A previous search area was 130 miles (209 kilometers) south of the area.
“It’s not the prime search area, but it’s not out of the question that this could possibly be from the black box,” said David Gallo, who is with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Also found Saturday — spotted by a Chinese air force search plane — were white objects floating near the search area, about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) from Perth, Xinhua said. Those were presumably the same objects cited by Houston.
Investigators have failed to link any of the many previous sightings of debris to the missing plane. But the proximity of the two finds raised hopes that this time might be different.
The ship first detected a signal Friday but couldn’t record it because the signal stopped abruptly, a Shanghai-based Communist Party newspaper said. The signal detected Saturday, the Jiefang Daily said, occurred at 3:57 p.m. Beijing time (3:57 a.m. ET) and lasted about a minute and a half. It was not clear whether the signal had anything to do with the missing plane.
A China Central Television correspondent aboard the Haixun-01 (pronounced “high shuen”) reported that the 37.5 kHz signal was detected for a minute and a half.
The signal “is the standard beacon frequency” for the plane’s cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, said Anish Patel, president of pinger manufacturer Dukane Seacom.
“They’re identical.”
The frequency was chosen for use in the recorders “to give that standout quality that does not get interfered with by the background noise that readily occurs in the ocean.”
But he said he would like to see more evidence. “I’d like to see some additional assets on site quickly — maybe some sonobuoys,” he said, referring to 5-inch-long (13-centimeter) sonar systems that are dropped from aircraft or ships.
And he said he was puzzled that only one signal had been detected, since each of the recorders was equipped with a pinger, which is also called a beacon.
Other experts cautioned that no confirmation had been made that the signal was linked to the missing plane.
From: http://fox6now.com/2014/04/05/
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