China satellite finds object near jet search area

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By SCOTT McDONALD and ROB GRIFFITH

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) - A satellite image released by China on Saturday 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 (72 feet) by 13 meters (43 feet) around noon Tuesday. The image location was about 120 kilometers (75 miles) 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 Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein told reporters Saturday.

The latest image is another clue in the baffling search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which dropped off air traffic control screens March 8 over the Gulf of Thailand with 239 people on board.

FULL story at link.


Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20140322/DACMNSAG1.html

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This image provided by China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense shows a floating object seen at sea next to the descriptor which was added by the source. The image was captured around noon, on March 18, 2014 (Tuesday) by a Chinese satellite in S44’57 E90’13 in south Indian Ocean. It shows what is suspected to be a floating object 22 meters long and 13 meters wide. It is about 120 km south (slightly to the west) of the suspected objects released by Australia. (AP Photo/ China State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense)

[bigworld]

1. Linkified location on google maps

http://goo.gl/maps/PioBx

wow, that is about the most remote place you can find.

[Voice for Peace]

4. truly.. 4 hours flight from land, they say

[sofa king]

7. Seriously remote.

The closest place to ditch near land going in that direction is probably Spit Bay on Heard Island. The nearest neighbor to McDonald and Heard Islands are the Kergulen Islands--better known in the old days as "Desolation Island".

Unless you've got some James Bond type of kidnapping and transfer of hostages to a nuclear submarine scheme going on, if this pans out the likely explanation seems to be leaning in the direction of decompression/incapacitation event that did in passengers and crew but not the plane--a little like the accident that killed Payne Stewart and the rest aboard his small plane.

[bigworld]

9. If you were to dig a tunnel from Wassau, Wisconsin

You'd come out about where the plane is.

http://www.freemaptools.com/tunnel-to-other-side-of-the-earth.htm

Just FYI.

[davidpdx]

2. Sounds like they are getting closer to finding some of the wreckage

Still a long way from finding the black box and what really happened during the flight.

[seabeckind]

3. A disturbing observation

I'm not following this story at all, tho it is very hard to escape the headlines and trailers.

What I noticed is that there is a lot of our shit floating around the oceans...

oil slicks, trying to figure out what oil slick is pertinent. If it wasn't common...

big junk, like containers.

At least all the styrofoam and plastic is small.

My what man has wrought.

[BlueEye]

5. Agreed.

Pollution of the oceans is one of the greatest under-reported environmental tragedies of our time. We don't even have a grasp on the toll this takes on marine flora and fauna.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

6. If so where was the plane heading?

Maybe the plane's computer had a virus and the pilots couldn't communicate.

[MADem]

8. There were a bunch of LITHIUM BATTERIES on that flight.

I knew someone who had one of those in a camera or some small device, and it just ...burst into flames--for no damn reason!

The airline said there were no hazardous or valuable goods on the flight. But among the cargo was a “significant” amount of lithium batteries — which can be flammable — more than is typically sent in a shipment, one U.S. official said.

http://www.startribune.com/world/251730681.html?page=1&c=y