[Peetwo]

Update: Via the Oz today -

What is Canberra hiding?

12:00amJOHN ROSS, SAM BUCKINGHAM-JONES

MH370 mystery deepens as Australian woman whose husband was a passenger hits out at the Transport Minister.

[img=0x0]https://i1.wp.com/pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/9588426f71b3e44ece91d1382b0d2326/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
An Australian woman whose husband was a passenger on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 says she is “seething” and has lashed out at Australian and Malaysian authorities for shrugging off new satellite evidence that may have pinpointed the plane’s crash site.

The comments come as oceanographers from the CSIRO say they have “unprecedented” confidence that they can use Australia’s biggest supercomputer to find MH370’s wreckage on a tiny strip of sea floor.

Despite mounting calls for the search to be resumed, transport safety bureaucrats are failing to take steps that could substantiate the scientists’ conclusion.

The inaction infuriated Danica Weeks, who was left to take care of her two children after her husband Paul disappeared with the plane on March 7, 2014.

She has urged Transport Minister Darren Chester to put greater pressure on his Malaysian counterparts.

[img=558x458]http://cdn.thinglink.me/api/image/954722336341229570/1024/10/scaletowidth#tl-954722336341229570;1043138249'[/img]

New CSIRO modelling of images of possible debris, taken by a French surveillance satellite just 15 days after the flight went down with 239 passengers and crew, tracks its likely resting place to a narrow band of the Indian Ocean just outside an earlier search zone.

Mr Chester said on Wednesday while he welcome the reports, they did not provide evidence leading to a specific location of MH370 and that it was up to ­Malaysia to initiate a new search.

Ms Weeks said the new reports were as specific as could be hoped for. “I’m infuriated. No, I’m seething at Darren Chester’s response,” she said. “This is a Boeing 777 that has had something go wrong. It’s gone missing and it’s a commercial aeroplane. Until we know what happened, nobody can board a commercial aeroplane and feel safe. That means you, and that means me.”

David Griffin, principal research scientist with CSIRO’s Oceans and Atmosphere division, said the pinpointed strip was 100km long at most and possibly as little as 10km wide. He was confident that if searchers looked there they would find something, and such an undertaking would be a minor investment compared with efforts so far. “You can never be sure, but we used about seven lines of evidence to come to that conclusion,” he said.

The finding hinges on assumptions that up to nine objects captured in one of the images, classified in a Geoscience Australia report as “probably man-made”, are from the aircraft. “To completely reject the possibility that any of these objects are pieces of (MH370) is difficult to defend,” CSIRO’s report says.

However, the GA researchers left open the possibility that the objects were “wave glint” or some other natural phenomenon. They said the best way to be sure would be to analyse other images taken by the same instrument on the same satellite and in a “similar sea-state”, but where “unnatural” debris was unexpected.

“For this reason, examination of further images is likely to be of value,” the GA report says.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau, which has responsibility for obtaining the extra images, was asked whether, when and how the bureau would acquire them. A spokesman said it was “considering future ­actions”.

It would focus particular attention on an area 3000sq km at most — a far cry from the 120,000sq km region already scoured with deep-sea sonar. Dr Griffin said scientists owed their new-found confidence to the fact the images had been taken 15 days after the flight went down. Previous modelling had hinged on wreckage that washed up 500 days later on Reunion, about 4000km away.

“We’re only having to backtrack for two weeks in this case,” he said.
The estimates made use of an ocean current model the agency has been refining for 15 years as part of its efforts to build Australia’s forecasting capability.

“I can throw in particles in any random place in the world, and track them forwards or backwards for a week, a year, 10 years,” he said.

MH370: more searching questions for ATSB over fiasco

• BYRON BAILEY
  
  
• The Australian
  
  
• 12:00AM August 18, 2017
  

The recent discovery of French military satellite photos, ignored 3½ years ago, that show some large pieces of debris in an area that agrees with CSIRO drift modelling of a B777 flaperon and the offer by US seabed exploration company Ocean Infinity, of Houston, to renew the search at its own financial risk bring to light the whole sorry fiasco that was the previous search by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

It’s interesting that the Malaysian government has not accepted the offer by Ocean Infinity, and it raises the question: what are they hiding?

Two months ago, I had a meeting in Los Angeles with a journalist who has written several books on criminal investigation and has her research teeth deep into everything associated with MH370. It was revealed to me that Captain Zaharie Shah received a two-minute phone call immediately prior to his departure on the ill-fated MH370 flight. The suspicion, yet to be confirmed, is that this phone call was from the Malaysian Prime Minister’s office.

A week after MH370 vanished, Malaysia’s Prime Minister, Najib Razak, gave his first official statement on the matter, saying the disappearance was no accident but the result of a “deliberate action by someone on the plane”. Less than an hour after its departure, at 12.41am, someone switched off the aircraft’s two main modes of contact, the automated aircraft communications addressing and reporting system and the transponder that sends the plane’s unique signals to air traffic control, and turned the now hidden aircraft around. It is obvious to airline pilots this had to be one of the flight crew.

With the Malaysian PM so adamant that this was no accident and the discovery of a deleted flight plan from Captain Shah’s home computer that led to the southern Indian Ocean, revealed by the FBI but denied by the ATSB, why did the then deputy prime minister Warren Truss and the ATSB go with a rubbish accident theory that has wasted more than three years. The FBI-ATSB link was confirmed by The New Yorker magazine in 2016.

It’s time also for Transport Minister Darren Chester to stop refusing the FOI request for release of documents pertaining to the MH370 search.


Byron Bailey is a former Emirates captain. He now flies private jets.

Pressure mounts on resumed search for MH370 - err maybe??

Via the other Aunty...

MH370: CSIRO uses French satellite images to narrow down crash site
By David Weber
Updated yesterday at 10:09pm Wed 16 Aug 2017, 10:09pm

Photo: The yellow line marks where 35 degrees south intersects the seventh arc (the black line).

The CSIRO has used satellite data provided by French authorities to further narrow down the area where it is believed Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 crashed.

The CSIRO and Geoscience Australia have analysed images of objects in the Indian Ocean, which were taken about two weeks after the plane disappeared on March 8, 2014...

"No, that's the kicker, is that it's impossible to be totally sure that they are from the plane, but the thing is that they are not natural items; they are large objects which clearly are not wave caps.

---

Via the Oz:

Satellite images narrow MH370’s crash zone

• The Australian
  
  
• 12:00AM August 17, 2017
  
• EMILY RITCHIE
  
  Journalist
  Sydney
  @emritchiejourno
  [img=0x0]https://i1.wp.com/pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/3bdbf7775ed466c42fa0795ff09415ea/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]
  

Families of passengers on lost Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have demanded a resumption of the search for the jet after startling evidence released yesterday narrowed the likely crash site of the aircraft to two areas on the edge of the original search zone.

Four satellite images taken two weeks after the plane and its 239 passengers and crew went missing in March 2014 have been re-examined, prompting Geo­science Australia and the CSIRO to home in on two narrow strips, no larger than 10km-30km each, to the east and west of the original search site.

Their report places the most likely location of the aircraft “with unprecedented precision and certainty” at 35.6°S, 92.8°E — in the Indian Ocean, findings that are considered more precise than any previous analysis.

The Australian and Malaysian governments said last night the images did not constitute evidence that would prompt ­resumption of the search, which was abandoned after covering 120,000sq km of ocean at a cost of $200 million, $60m of which Australia contributed.

Byron Bailey, a former senior captain with Emirates who now flies private jets, said the ­Australian government and the ATSB should be “ashamed of themselves”. “What I can’t ­understand is why it has taken 3½ years before a French satellite’s images prompted action by the ATSB.”

He said he expected the plane would be largely intact and that the captain had had enough fuel to perform a controlled landing above a very deep sea trench.

The satellite images, released yesterday by the ATSB, contain up to 70 objects, of which up to 12 were “possibly man-made”, ­according to Geoscience Australia. Their dimensions match some of the plane debris that washed up on African beaches last year.

The images were acquired with the help of French authorities, taken in the southern Indian Ocean within a 25,000sq km area on the periphery of the original search area.

Victorian Jennifer Chong, whose husband Chong Ling Tan was onboard MH370, said yesterday she and other families of MH370 victims would be calling on both the Malaysian and Australian governments to re-­establish a search.

“This certainly warrants a new search,” Ms Chong said. “I think it is really interesting that they’ve only discovered this now, three years after, even though the ­images were taken shortly after the incident. My first response is anger because they’ve had these images for such a long time.”

Ms Chong added she was grateful the incident was still being investigated, even after the underwater search was abandoned in January. 

Geoscience Australia received the images from the ATSB for analysis on March 23 and considers 12 objects to be man-made, and 28 possibly man-made.

An ATSB spokesman said this satellite imagery reanalysis was part of a systematic process of ­review that commenced last year.

Infrastructure Minister Darren Chester said he welcomed the new reports, but added it was important to note they did “not provide new evidence leading to a specific location of MH370”.

“Malaysia is the lead investigator and any future requests in relation to searching for MH370 would be considered by Australia at that time,” Mr Chester said.

Malaysian Transport Minister Dato Sri Liow Tiong said the newly defined area was not enough to go on and it was hoped debris-drift modelling would help narrow the location further.

Investigators have known for two years that the plane crashed somewhere along a line known as the seventh arc, to the west of Western Australia.

According to the CSIRO drift report, the new debris was located near the seventh arc, which made it “impossible to ignore”.

The plane would “most likely” be located in two narrow (10km-30km) strips east and west of the completed search area.

ATSB chief commissioner Greg Hood urged caution on the new findings. “These objects have not been definitely identified as MH370 debris,” Mr Hood said. “Geoscience Australia identified a number of objects in the satellite imagery which have been classified as probably man-made. The image resolution is not high enough to be certain whether the objects originated from MH370 or are other objects that might be found floating in oceans around the world.”

The images, taken by a French Military satellite, show apparent debris that was disregarded by governments and authorities in late March 2014 — before the ATSB became involved in the search.

CSIRO oceanographer David Griffin said this was because countless other photos of debris uncovered at the time led to fruitless searches.

Is it just me (& Byron bailey)?? - Don't you think it is passing strange that at virtually the same time as the public exposure of Ocean Infinity 'no find, no fee' offer to the Malaysian Government, that this latest ATSB/CSIRO/GeoScience findings is also made public?

So these SAT Phots are nearly 3.5 years old and they have just (23 March 2017 received by GA) analysed them...

Also with a quick check to when that Geoscience Australia report was copied to PDF - Download Geoscience Australia satellite imagery analyses report [ Download PDF: 17.14MB] - it would appear that the ATSB/CSIRO etc. have sat on the report for more than 2 weeks...WTD -   
As usual when it comes to MH370, something smells here...        

[*]


MTF...P2