They've been spotted and spotted again, those objects in the
southern Indian Ocean. Every time a report comes out that something has been
seen that may be related to missing Malaysia Flight 370, hopes have risen. And
then, they have fallen. It's seemed like a daily exercise.
For instance, images taken by a Thai satellite and released
Thursday showed about 300 objects ranging in size from 6 feet (2 meters) to 50
feet (15 meters). When photographed Monday, they were about 125 miles (201
kilometers) away from the spot where a French satellite captured images of a
floating group of objects Sunday.
Could it be?
Knowing for sure is a waiting game. It will be
at least Friday before planes can try to find the materials because bad weather
in the remote spot has again hampered searching.
Here's a rundown of how many times we've been through this:
On March 9, Vietnam’s navy spotted a floating object about 80
kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Vietnam's Tho Chu Island, which is off the
country's southwest coast in the Gulf of Thailand, Vietnam National Search and
Rescue Committee spokesman Hung Nguyen told CNN. Vietnamese navy rescue
aircraft spotted the object in the evening hours local time. Because of the dark,
the navy aircraft could not get close enough to identify the floating object
and was recalled to base. Three search and rescue boats were deployed to that
location.
A Chinese satellite had a
sighting that captured a lot of interest but it was later retracted as a
mistake. It was not in the southern Indian ocean.
China said it captured a "suspected floating object" on
March 18. The object the Chinese photographed was 22.5 meters long and 13
meters wide (74 feet by 43 feet), officials said.
Around March 19, it was reported that witnesses on the ground
claimed they saw Flight 370. A man from New Zealand working on an oil rig off
Vietnam claimed he saw a burning object in the sky on the morning of March 8,
hours after the plane had taken off from Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing.
Then came reports that had many believing "This is it!"
and headlines carried the news. But it turned out to be nothing.On March 20,
CNN quoted Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as saying that authorities had
spotted two objects in the Indian Ocean that were possibly related to the
search for missing Flight 370.
Those objects have not been found.
During a March 22 search, a civil aircraft reported that it had
spotted some small objects floating, including a wooden pallet, the Australian
Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said. These objects were within a radius of
about three miles.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-3 Orion was sent to the area, but
only reported seeing bunches of seaweed, AMSA said.
On March 24, Australian officials said they saw
two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the
flight. One object was "a gray or green circular object," and the
other was "an orange rectangular object,"according to AMSA.
Mary Schiavo, a CNN aviation analyst and former inspector general
for the U.S. Department of Transportation, appeared on CNN to explain why those
objects seemed intriguing.
"The gray/green is the color of the inside of the
aircraft," she said. "A great number of pieces of metal and other
things in the aircraft are of gray/green color, everything from the metal in
the fuselage and pieces of the mechanical parts..."
Orange and bright yellow "are the color of the emergency
escape slides, the life rafts inside the plane," she said. "The life
vests, but they wouldn't be that big. So there are many things that are those
colors that could be a signal that it's not something that has fallen off a
ship but rather that it's something from out of a plane."
The Australian naval ship HMAS Success didn't turn up the objects
when it searched Monday night, AMSA said.
There is no word yet if those objects have been found or what they
are.
Also on Monday, a Chinese military plane said it had seen
"suspicious objects" in the same area.A U.S. surveillance plane sent
to follow up was unable to find them.
On Wednesday, a French defense firm provided new satellite images
that showed 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, not far from
other satellite sightings that could be related to Flight 370, Malaysia's
acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Bin Hussein said.
The objects were scattered over 154 square miles (400 square
kilometers), he said.
Hishammuddin said he wasn't sure if Australian authorities
coordinating the search for the plane Wednesday had been able to follow up on
the new satellite images, which came from Airbus Defence and Space.
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