The new findings led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to conclude that the Boeing 777, which disappeared more than two weeks ago, crashed thousands of miles away in the southern Indian Ocean, killing everyone on board.
Investigators working on the disappearance of the plane believe that it had been flown on a suicide mission.
Radar pings from MH370, automatically transmitted every hour from the aircraft after the rest of its communications systems had stopped, indicated it continued flying for hours after it disappeared from its flight path from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.
Tragic: The moment a relative of passengers
aboard Malaysia Airlines MH370 learned the jet ended its journey in the
remote Southern Indian Ocean
Heartbreaking: Malaysia's Prime Minister Najib
Razak tells the families of passengers of MH370 that the plane crashed
into the southern Indian Ocean and all aboard were killed
From the time the signals took to reach the satellite, belonging to the UK firm Inmarsat, and the angle of elevation, Inmarsat was able to provide two arcs, one north and one south that the aircraft could have taken.
Inmarsat's scientists then interrogated the faint pings using a technique based on the Doppler effect, which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of an observer, in this case the satellite, a spokesman said.
Britain's Air Accidents Investigation Branch and experts from the European space industry were also involved in the analysis.
The Doppler effect is why the sound of a police car siren changes as it approaches and then overtakes an observer.
Mr Razak said that British firm Inmarsat had employed 'a type of analysis never before used in an investigation of this sort'.
Inmasart's crack team used unprecedented analysis to confirm the worst fears of the families of the passengers on board MH370
Solution: Inmarsat's scientists analysed the
faint pings from MH370 using a technique based on the Doppler effect,
which describes how a wave changes frequency relative to the movement of
an observer, in this case the satellite. The changes in ping times
indicated that the plane was moving south
At a press conference in Kuala Lumpur today, Malaysia's transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein gave more details on how the authorities came to the conclusion that the flight had crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
He said that the plane last communicated with a ground station at 12.11am, but had disappeared by 1.15am, suggesting that its systems either failed or were disabled at some time between those points.
'There is evidence of a partial handshake between the aircraft and ground station at 0019 UTC (GMT),' he said. 'At this time, this transmission is not understood and is subject to further ongoing work.'
The minister added: 'The new analysis was convincing enough to brief the prime minister that MH370 flew along the south corridor.
'This type of analysis has never been done in an investigation of this type - this is a developing situation, and as soon as we know more we will share it.'
Mr Hussein confirmed that the search had been called off in the 'northern corridor' stretching up to the Caspian Sea, saying that it was now focussed on an area of 469,407 square miles to the south-west of Australia.
Chris McLaughlin, Inmarsat's senior vice
president, explained how his firm was able to conclude the aircraft
definitely flew south, with assistance from Britain's Air Accidents
Investigation Branch
Inmarsat's satellite technology was crucial to
detecting radar pings, and providing the compelling evidence as to the
tragic fate of MH370
Malaysia Airlines chief executive
Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said that the plane did not have enough fuel to stay
in the air above the Indian Ocean for more than a few hours.He added that the area where the flight is believed to have come down is so remote that the prospect of anyone on board surviving for more than two weeks is 'extremely remote'.
Speaking to BBC News today, Chris McLaughlin, Inmarsat's senior vice president, explained how his firm was able to conclude the aircraft definitely flew south.
He said: 'We took Malaysian 777 airline data and modeled that against the northern and southern path and what we discovered was that the path to the south is undoubtedly the one taken.'
Asked why it took so long, he said: 'We have been dealing with a totally new area, we have been trying to help an investigation based on a single signal once and hour from an aircraft that didn't include any GPS data or any time and distance information so this really was a bit of a shot in the dark and it is to the credit of our scientific team that they managed to model this.'
The new data revealed that MH370 flew along the southern corridor where investigators had said the plane could have travelled along, based on pings sent several hours after it disappeared on March 8.
Investigators had drawn up two huge search areas in two large arcs - a northern corridor stretching from Malaysia to Central Asia and a southern corridor extending down towards Antartica.
No comments:
Post a Comment