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| Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force's P-3C Orion arrives to help with search operations for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 at Royal Australian Air Force Pearce Base in Perth, Australia, Sunday, March 23, 2014. |
PERTH, Australia
(AP) -- France provided new satellite data Sunday showing possible
debris from the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, as searchers combing a
remote part of the southern Indian Ocean tried without success to locate
a wooden pallet that could yield clues to one of the world's most
baffling aviation mysteries.
The new data
consists of "radar echoes" in the same part of the ocean where satellite
images previously released by Australia and China showed what might be
debris from the plane, French authorities said.
Flight
370 vanished March 8 with 239 people aboard while en route from Kuala
Lumpur, Malaysia, to
Beijing, setting off a multinational search that
has turned up no confirmed pieces and nothing conclusive on what
happened to the jet.
The latest satellite data
came to light as Australian authorities coordinating the search,
conducted about 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth, sent
planes and a ship to try to "re-find" a wooden pallet that appeared to
be surrounded by straps of different lengths and colors.
The
pallet was spotted on Saturday from a search plane, but the spotters
were unable to take photos of it, and a PC Orion military plane
dispatched to locate it could not find it.
"So,
we've gone back to that area again today to try and re-find it," said
Mike Barton, chief of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's rescue
coordination center. He added: "It's a possible lead."
Wooden pallets are often used by ships, Barton cautioned. But he said airlines also commonly use them in cargo holds.
An
official with Malaysia Airlines said Sunday night that the flight was,
in fact, carrying wooden pallets. The official spoke on condition of
anonymity in keeping with company policy.
AMSA said it has requested a cargo manifest from Malaysia Airlines.
When
Brazilian searchers in 2009 were looking for debris from Air France
Flight 447 after it mysteriously plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, they
found a wooden pallet. The military initially reported the pallet came
from the Air France flight, but backtracked hours later and said the
plane had not been carrying any wooden pallets.
Sunday's
search was frustrating because "there was cloud down to the surface,
and at times we were completely enclosed by cloud," Royal Australian Air
Force flight Lt. Russell Adams told reporters.
Nothing
of interest was found, he said. But he added that the search was worth
it because "we might do 10 sorties and find nothing, but on that 11th
flight when you find something and you know that you're actually
contributing to some answers for somebody."
In
Paris, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal said in an
interview with The Associated Press that the satellite radar echoes
"identified some debris that could be from the Malaysian Airlines
plane."
The spokesman said that these echoes
"are not images with a definition like a photograph, but they do allow
us to identify the nature of an object and to localize it."
"The
French government has decided to increase its satellite monitoring of
this zone and try to obtain precise images and locations," Nadal said.
Gathering
satellite echo data involves sending a beam of energy to the Earth and
then analyzing it when it bounces back, according to Joseph Bermudez
Jr., chief analytics officer at AllSource Analysis, a commercial
satellite intelligence firm.
Satellite radar
echoes can be converted into an image that would look similar to a
black-and-white photo, though not as clear, he said. "You'd have to know
what you're looking at," Bermudez said.
A
Malaysian official involved in the search said the French data located
objects about 930 kilometers (575 miles) north of the spots where the
objects in the images released by Australia and China were located.
One
of the objects located was estimated to be about the same size as an
object captured Tuesday by the Chinese satellite that appeared to be 22
meters (72 feet) by 13 meters (43 feet), said the official, who declined
to be identified because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. It
was not possible to determine precise dimensions from the French data,
the official said.
The southern Indian Ocean
is thought to be a potential area to find the jet because Malaysian
authorities have said pings sent by the Boeing 777-200 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.
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.
Authorities
are considering the possibilities of hijacking, sabotage, terrorism or
issues related to the mental health of the pilots or someone else on
board.
In the U.S., Tony Blinken, President
Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said on CNN: "There is
no prevailing theory."
"Publicly or privately, we don't know" what happened to the plane, he said. "We're chasing down every theory."
