>> he said they were able to do something that's never been done before. they figured out the plane's direction of travel by using a particular calculation to analyze the jet's automated satellite data. a formman walked us through how they did it. >> what this search is coming down to is basic mathematic detective work. if you were to shout out to a canyon wall somewhere and wait for the echo to come back, it would take a certain amount of time. if the wall were further away, it would take longer. you combine that with the doppler affect and that's how we got this arc of where the plane might be. they have this satellite in geostationary orbit. it's at the same spot above earth. we moved it into particular position so we can see it. 22,000 miles up. it's every hour sending a ping or electronic handshake down to