Page 32 - Data Recorders News Today

Square miles to have a realistic shot searching for data recorders. >> weve seen over the past few weeks, specifically this past weas various countries phi objects on satellite. what kind of objects have they been picking up from the waters? >> reporter: fishing ropes, buoys, dead jelly fish today, random garbage. no trace of flight 370. its incredibly frustrating. you understand where that comes in. families following this search every hour from this base as ships hit the skies -- as planes hit...

Its there now. its necessary until wreckage is found and identified. what do they plan to do with the pinger locater before theres debris confirmation? >> the investigation has entered a critical point here. this pinger locater along with the blue fin 21. these pieces of equipment will be fitted on an australia ship, the egs shield. it will get on site two to three days after it sails off tomorrow. theyll be listening carefully for that pinging sound this will be coming from the data recorders. ...

Them chinese nationals. they spotted four orange objects in the ocean. bring in affairiation associate renee marsh. renee, this ocean shield ship as its named is heading out shortly with a u.s. pinger on board. deploying that device will be rather challenging, wont it? >> it absolutely will be, fred. that pinger locater is a critical piece of equipment used to find black boxes where the data recorders. that has been loaded onto that australian navy ship and the ship will leave monday. it wont ar...

Search box. work it backwards. calculate where the additional debris may be, where the data recorders may be. once they do that, they will then very likely quickly begin to use the u.s. navy technology that is going to the scene. and that is first that pinger locator, if you will, the device that will be put in the water and towed around and it will listen for the ping from the data recorders. there is also a navy unmanned remote piloted vehicle. essentially a mini sub, if you will. very small u...

Slower compared to the other search location by, say, five miles a day travel versus 35 miles a day. as well as the winds are less strong. >> so, there you are. first of all, this is an area where the currents are less significant. so if a satellite, if an aircraft overhead spots debris, a ship should be able to get to it. what happens then, they pull it out of the water, they try and verify that its actually from a 777. at that point, thats when u.s. navy technology may actually kick in very qu...

>> reporter: that means that an r.o.v. like this one could lay the first eyes on the wreckage site of mh 370. >> it could tell you about the wreckage f wreckage, and if it came apart, and if parts were metal arms and jaws are controlled by a joy stick. >> open and close the jaws. not a problem at all for an rov to pick it in a basket and recover it back to the vessel. >> reporter: before the data recorders are recovered, the wreckage must be located, a task as daunting as the indian ocean is dee...

>> reporter: thats because data recorders like the one on flight 370 are now more sophisticated. the older model aboard twa flight 800 would record only 18 indicators. investigators needed to reassemble the debris because the data only gave a partial view of what happened on board at the time of the crash. >> essentially, speed, altitude, heading. so it was not that helpful in the -- determining what the probable cause was. >> reporter: the missing data from flight 370 captures more information,...

>> reporter: is that kind of reconstruction still necessary? >> well, theres obviously debate about that. >> reporter: thats because data recorders like the one on flight 370 are now more sophisticated. the older model aboard twa flight 800 would record only 18 indicators. investigators needed to reassemble the debris because the data only gave a partial view of what happened on board at the time of the crash. >> essentially, speed, altitude, heading. so it was not that helpful in the -- determi...

Information from the all-important black boxes. this is what the pinging of one of the data recorders sounds like once its made contact with water. even after a prolonged period in assetwater, data is still retrievable. >> a good success rate with recovery. all of the recorders go through different stresses and -- but overall, weve had a very good success rate with water recovery. >> have you ever not gotten data in a water recovery? >> i cant think of one. >> reporter: recorders found in saltwa...

But does it sound like were getting closer to finding something or is this just another week of i see something here and there? lets start with you, peter. >> well, you know, this new area of search was identified by a new team of fresh eyes looking at the data, extrapolating it out in a more detailed way. this is really the last best hope weve got prior to the batteries of the data recorders expiring. and so i think it is -- i think weve got to be optimistic. weve got to search. my contacts at ...