A Thai satellite has detected about 300 objects floating in the Indian Ocean near the search area for the missing Malaysia Airlines jetliner. Anond Snidvongs, director of Thailand’s space technology development agency, said Thursday the images showed “300 objects of various sizes” in the southern Indian Ocean about 2,700 kilometres southwest of Perth.
He says the images were taken by the Thaichote satellite on Monday, took two days to process and were relayed to Malaysian authorities on Wednesday. Anond says the objects were about 200 kilometres from the area where a French satellite on Sunday spotted 122 objects. It remains uncertain whether the objects are from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared March 8 with 239 people aboard. The announcement came soon after Australian officials said search operations for the missing plane had been suspended for the day due to bad weather.
Searchers aboard planes and ships on Thursday failed to find any of the 122 objects previously captured by satellite as possible debris from the downed Malaysian Airlines jet, as heavy rain, winds and low clouds forced the aircraft to return to the base after only a few hours. More on this later …