Page 48 - Data Recorders News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>>. >> four pings heard in the indian ocean have narrowed the search area for flight 370. it's not nearly as wide as it was before. but it is still just as deep. crews will need a new set of tools to search nearly three miles now down to the ocean floor. rosa flores has more. >> reporter: four times investigators have heard pings that are consistent with the signals coming from the missing jet's data recorders. >> i believe we are searching in the right area, but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage. >> reporter: that's where this probe comes in. it was sent to the indian ocean to sc...

>> reporter: the u.s. national transportation safety board and the british air accident investigation branch as well as australian authorities each have capabilities with sophisticated labs and technicians. but an international working group of experts has also been suggested. if they are found, decoding the black boxes could be complicated. the boxes are built to withstand extreme conditions including fire and heat damage. but depending on the circumstances of the crash, memory chips extracted from the data recorders could still be damaged and might require cleaning until the raw data begins ...

That are consistent with the signals coming from the missing jet's data recorders. >> i believe we are searching in the right area but we need to visually identify aircraft wreckage. >> reporter: that's where this probe comes in. it was sent to the indian ocean to scour the ocean floor. it's called an auv, autonomous underwater vehicle using side scan sonar, you see it here, to create that picture and equipped with a gps system. you can see it right over here. of course that let's the crew know where this probe is at any point in time. it has been used before to identify and help recover plane...

>> reporter: the u.s. national transportation safety board and the air investigative branch as well as australian authorities each have sophisticated capabilities with labs and technicians. but an international group of workers is suggested. if they are found, decoding the black boxes is critical, depending on the circumstances of the crash, memory chips taken from the data recorders could still be damaged and may require cleaning until the raw data begins to paint a picture of what happened. >> we still don't know what condition they're in. and they have been sitting on the bottom of the ocea...

They tell us the investigation is going to be long. what we heard from the chief of police is they have interviewed, taken statements from 205 different people including some of the families of the crew members. about a week or so back they told us 170 statements have been taken. so we can now add another 35 to that over the past week. today the police are working away at it. but they have said all along that the key information is going to come from these black boxes or at least from the data recorders they hope. >> nic robertson reporting live from kuala lumpur. i'm back in a minute. mine wa...