Another image of debris has been picked up by a Chinese satellite on Saturday, giving new hope for possible answers to the near three-week missing Malaysian flight MH370.
The image is in close proximity to the other satellite images found by an Australian satellite earlier this week, in the remote stretch of the southern Indian Ocean, a vast expanse of deep and endless water.
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 two other objects were discovered.
“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 said.
The latest image seems to be just another clue in the mysterious and futile search for the Boeing 777, which went missing March 8 less than an hour after leaving Kuala Lumpur heading to Beijing with 239 people on board.
After about a week of confusion, and many suspicious officials withholding information, authorities said pings sent by the aircraft for several hours after it disappeared from radar left officials to strongly assume that the plane ended up in one of two huge arcs: a northern area stretching from Malaysia up to Central Asia, and a southern area that stretches in an arch toward Antarctica.
The objects are extremely difficult to locate and many search teams have been involved in the effort to locate them, however, the weather and vastness of that area of ocean is making it difficult.
Search aircraft are flying from Perth, AU, to the site, which is nearly 1500 miles to the suspected site, and with limited fuel and visibility for searching, they have found nothing.
The efforts are being reinforced as two military planes from China arrived Saturday in Perth to join Australian, New Zealand and U.S. aircraft in the search. Japanese planes will arrive Sunday and ships are already in the area or on their way.
Many experts feel that the search should continue on land as well, because even if both satellites detected the same object, it may be unrelated to the plane.
Image via YouTube