Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 is Missing

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

I have heard it stated as no plane debris, meaning that it might have been something else. Given the location my bet garbage. Option two, whales surfacing. Just goes to show first reports are not always reliable.

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

Wall Street Journal is quoting U.S. investigators who suspect missing flight MH370 may have flown for an additional four hours after it went missing from civilian radar screens earlier on Saturday morning Malaysia time.

On Twitter, Ian Petchenik has illustrated just how far the plane could have gone in that time — potentially all the way to Australia. We should note, this map doesn’t take into account earlier reports that the plane veered to the west after it went missing. But it serves to show that the plane could have covered lots of ground if U.S. investigators’ suspicions are correct.

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

t2contra said:

Wall Street Journal is quoting U.S. investigators who suspect missing flight MH370 may have flown for an additional four hours after it went missing from civilian radar screens earlier on Saturday morning Malaysia time.

On Twitter, Ian Petchenik has illustrated just how far the plane could have gone in that time — potentially all the way to Australia. We should note, this map doesn’t take into account earlier reports that the plane veered to the west after it went missing. But it serves to show that the plane could have covered lots of ground if U.S. investigators’ suspicions are correct.

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Four hours of flight? That translates into more then three thousand kilometers. I just can't believe it.

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

Jeff Head said:

Military recon and surveillance satellites have various resolutions available to them, depending on mission. They use CCD (Charged Coupling Device) technology for the digital imagery resolution and the larger military ones have a broader view than most might imagine. Check out how large the KH-11 Keyhole satellites are (about the size of the Hubble Telescope) and understand that there is a lot of equipment packed into those babies.

Many of them have their own algorithms that allow them to search for specific types of features at lower resolution over broader areas and then train higher resolution onto areas of interest...sometimes in the same pass, other times on following passes.

I do not believe this particular satellite had such capability.

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Does not matter what resolution the CCD has or what the scanning mode is, the basic principle remains the same. Optimal surface resolution (or "focal length") for searching small objects in a large area is not necessarily the higher the better, it just need to be high enough to distinguish an object from the background. So the most "advanced" (if defined by how close it can "zoom in") is not necessarily the most suitable. Note that I'm not saying the Gaofen-1 which was used to take the picture is more suitable than any KH-11s in this case, I'm just pointing out the general principle. I believe they're just using what they have at hand. For your information, the Gaofen-1 is used for civilian purposes and perhaps duel-use for military intelligence, but it's not commercial as it is owned and operated by the state. Here is a brief description of its equipments:

It carries two 2m panchromatic/8m multi-spectral high-definition cameras and four 16m resolution wide-angle cameras. The cameras are advanced enough to take images of a bicycle, Xu said.

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By the way, I don't know much about the keyhole sat series as most of it remain classified, but if its basic structure is similar to the Hubble then the focal length of each lens assembly is most likely fixed. They may use multiple lens assemblies or multiple satellites to fulfill various focal-length needs, but it won't be like a zoom lens on DSLRs. Anyway this is beside the point.

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

The link to the WSJ report

Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours
Engine Data Suggest Malaysia Flight Was Airborne Long After Radar Disappearance, U.S. Investigators Say

Aviation investigators and national security officials believe the plane flew for a total of five hours, based on data automatically downloaded and sent to the ground from the Boeing Co. BA -0.99% 777's engines as part of a routine maintenance and monitoring program.

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Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

t2contra said:

The link to the WSJ report

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Missing Airplane Flew On for Hours
Engine Data Suggest Malaysia Flight Was Airborne Long After Radar Disappearance, U.S. Investigators Say

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Still lacks an official confirmation on this, but if true, I wonder why it took them so long find out.

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

Hi Guys,

I'm asking all of our SDF members, if any of you volunteer to help searching for the missing Boeing 777, please read and join .

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

So does anyone actually realize how weird the whole Mh370 situation is panning out? A 777 with experienced pilots is cruising along and poof, gone from everyone's sights... Days later not a single piece of wreckage, passengers cell phones are ringing all the way until voice mail, No ELT signals, No distress calls ect.... It just keeps getting weirder and weirder each day . Now if the plane crashed where the Authorizes think it might have gone down, its one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world so a 777 going down into the water would not have been Unnoticed.

So where are you MH370? Is this a game of hide and seek?

Around ten nations from the international community are currently assisting the search to find the missing Malaysian Airlines aircraft

The tragic disappearance of a Malaysian airliner on Saturday has brought together opposition navies in a rare show of maritime cooperation in the waters of Southeast Asia

Re: Malaysia Airlines Plane is Missing

Look like it's another false alarm. However, why not calling in military satellite to scan the suspected area? Interesting, this plane also has a 777.

HO CHI MINH CITY: Search planes have found no trace of a missing Malaysian airliner near the site where a Chinese satellite spotted floating objects, officials said on Thursday.

Two Vietnamese aircraft sent to inspect areas nearby "have returned and we found nothing so far", Civil Aviation Authority deputy director Dinh Viet Thang told AFP on the sixth day of the hunt for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370.

A Malaysian plane dispatched to the area also saw nothing as of early afternoon on Thursday, according to the Malaysian air force's director-general of operations, Affendi Buang.

"Nil sighting," he said in a text message to AFP.

The Chinese satellite images provided a new lead in the search for the Boeing 777, which vanished on Saturday with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The search has suffered several false alarms over suspected debris.

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