Satellite data helped narrow search
HONG KONG — Investigators are closer to solving an international aviation mystery thanks to a British communications satellite and classroom physics.
A masterful analysis of a handful of faint signals sent from Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 to an Inmarsat satellite led officials to conclude that the Boeing 777 crashed in a remote part of the southern Indian Ocean. More precise information about the plane’s position when it sent the last signals is helping authorities refine the search being undertaken by planes and ships in seas 2,500 kilometres southwest of Perth, Australia.
Investigators had precious little information to examine otherwise because the transponder, identifying the jet to air traffic controllers, was deactivated about the same time the jet veered off course from its original destination, Beijing, early on March 8.
Even with other communications shut down, the plane sent an automatic signal — a “ping” or a “handshake” — every hour to an Inmarsat satellite. The pings did not show the jet’s location, speed or heading, but an initial analysis showed the last ping came from a position along one of two vast arcs north and south from the Malaysian peninsula.
For its more detailed analysis, Inmarsat studied the pings sent from Flight 370 on the ground at Kuala Lumpur airport and early in its flight. It considered aircraft performance, satellite location and other known factors to calculate the possible positions, direction of travel and speed of the plane. It then compared its predictions to six other Boeing 777 aircraft that flew the same day and found good agreement, according to Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.
“By analyzing that you can determine speed and direction,” said Joseph Bermudez Jr., chief analytics officer and co-founder of AllSource Analysis, a commercial satellite intelligence firm. And by determining the area from which the last signal was sent, then estimating fuel left, it “could give you an approximate area of where the aircraft impacted.”
Inmarsat sent its data to investigators days after the plane went missing. But it continued to run its own analysis to search for more clues.
“They exploited a digital trail that was never intended for that use,” said David Cyganski, dean of engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.