Thailand’s earth observing satellite recorded 300 floating objects which are potential fragments of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 within the southern search zone SW of Perth on Monday.
The objects were imaged the day after an Airbus Defence satellite passed over this general area of the southern Indian Ocean, finding 122 objects varying between 1-23 metres.
The Thai platform showed objects of between 2-15 metres size some 200 kms further to the SW than the later Airbus Defence images, and show much less by way of cloud cover. They may include some of the objects picked up between gaps in the clouds a day later.
The imagery was passed to Malaysian authorities today, which is expected to have passed them on to AMSA, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority which is coordinating the search and recovery effort.
The fresh discovery follows today’s curtailing of the air search of target zones by 11 military and civil aircraft from Perth today after thunderstorms and heavy rain moved in.
However the maritime search continued, with Australia’s HMAS Success and four China naval or Antarctic supply ships remaining on station.
The Australian coordinated air and sea search is expected to be back to full strength when the conditions improve as currently forecast tomorrow Friday.
These latest satellite images add to the belief that there are extensive areas of debris that is likely to have come from the missing Boeing 777-200ER tantilisingly close to being located and recovered by the ships.
There were 239 people on board MH370, which disappeared from civil air traffic control screens shortly after take off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on 8 March when it was over the Gulf of Thailand.
The images were taken by Thailand’s only earth observing satellite, which is primarily tasked with tracking and analysing land use changes and calamities like oil spills or floods and took several days to process by Thailand’s Geo-Informatics Space Technology Development Agency.
In an AFP interview the agency’s executive director, Anond Snidvongs, says “But we cannot – dare not – confirm they are debris from the plane.”
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