Detected Pings Reignite MH 370 Location Hopes

Sunday's signals are in line with an airplane's flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. Additional evidence is still needed, as experts cautioned. Australian search official Angus Houston described, "There are many steps yet before these detections can be positively verified as being from missing Flight MH370".

Supplementary pings are needed to determine the exact location of where the signals are. Australian vessel "The Ocean Shield" is repeatedly revisiting the ocean area where it already picked up a signal, for the next 24 hours. The goal is to administer triangulation, to determine the exact place of the instrument that is transmitting the signals.

The process is time-consuming and meticulous; by its finish, the vessel will only have attended to a 3-mile-by-3-mile box. Each crossing over the ocean is a seven to eight hour ordeal for "The Ocean Shield". If anything concrete is discovered, an unmanned underwater tool "Bluefin-21", will be deployed. It has the ability to construct ocean floor maps and can reveal aircraft wreckage.

The inspected water area is extremely deep, making the quest even more complex. If the pings are indeed from Flight 370, they could become mute at any time, as the batteries may have already terminated. The maximum life span of the batteries are approximately another week, if even that.  Official Houston commented, "If we're unable to fix the location, the people who are out there have to do an analysis of everything they've got and make an assessment of whether they would deploy the underwater vehicle in the most likely area".