engineers understand what this means and how it fits into the big picture. >> at this time, this mission is subject to further ongoing work. >> reporter: is this partial ping a sign that the plane was still flying or is it the moment it went down in the indian ocean? >> this extra data point is not in itself very definitively conclusive about the fate of the plane. it will allow us, should it come to that, to have a some what better -- a somewhat narrower search field. >> reporter: the plane never made its next satellite connection scheduled for 9:15, around the same time the plane would have run out of fuel. >> at the time of that transmission was received, even though it was partial and incomplete, somewhat garbled, presumably the equipment that was sending it was intact and sometime after that there was an impact and it stopped functioning completely. >> reporter: the new data helps further plot the flight path of flight 370.