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China Deploys Satellites In Search For Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
EwanPalmer writes "China has begun using its orbiting satellites in a bid to find the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. The Xi'an Satellite Monitor and Control Center is said to have launched an emergency response to search for Flight MH370 after it went off radar over the South China Sea in the early hours of Saturday. The center is reported to have adjusted up to 10 of its high-res satellites to help search for the plane."
Sometimes big airliners can get lost at those.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
There's an auto-playing video embedded in the linked article's page - just in case you hate that sort of thing.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Sounds like there was a very important person of Chinese descent on it.
Several. Quite a few movers and shakers, including holiday takers. China takes care of its own.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nooooo. Not spy, just, y'know, observing ... stuff, yeah observing stuff, that's the ticket. All just hanging around up there, just in case they're needed for something like this.
Nothing to see here, move along.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Radar is line of sight. So a plane at 11000 meters, can be seen about 375 km away from the radar installation, assuming a radar at ground level.
If your radar is within 200km of the plane, the plane would fall below the radar horizon at about 5km altitude.
Given the description of the plane's flight path, if it was being tracked by radar from Kuala Lumpur, then "dropped off the radar" would have been closer to 10km altitude than to 5km.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
"So - these are Chinese spy satellites? Given the region, hasen't the US got similar facilities in zone?"
You know that satellites don't orbit above a fixed point on the earth. (well except for geostationary ones that are 25,000 milrd up, and generally you want your spy satellites closer than that..
" How low does a plane need to fly to "drop off the radar"?"
That depends on how far away from the radar it is. Sonce it was pretty far away, I would expect the radar not to be able to see it if the plane dropped to below 10000 ft, which the crew would try to do if there was sudden depressurization.
Of course the US has satellites that can look at that part of the world. And they may well be doing so. It's just China is trying to score a couple of PR points by showing that they can act like a Big Important Country and task their surveillance satellites to suit their interests.
We of course know that they can - spy satellites don't do much good if you can't spy on people. The US is also spending assets in the search. So will everyone else who is involved.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Once a spy satellite is in orbit, you deploy it for specific tasks. Once a ship is deployed for the Arabian Gulf, it can be deployed to the Indian Ocean without having to first return to port.
If you look at a map you'll see this flight path takes you past some pretty well monitored territory - though obviously there are a few bugth in the thythtem.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Of course the US has satellites that can look at that part of the world. And they may well be doing so. It's just China is trying to score a couple of PR points by showing that they can act like a Big Important Country and task their surveillance satellites to suit their interests.
We of course know that they can - spy satellites don't do much good if you can't spy on people. The US is also spending assets in the search. So will everyone else who is involved.
Your left shoe is untied.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Radar is line of sight. So a plane at 11000 meters, can be seen about 375 km away from the radar installation, assuming a radar at ground level.
If your radar is within 200km of the plane, the plane would fall below the radar horizon at about 5km altitude.
Given the description of the plane's flight path, if it was being tracked by radar from Kuala Lumpur, then "dropped off the radar" would have been closer to 10km altitude than to 5km.
Why do they not have satellite location based reporting on the planes providing the planes position every five minutes? Expand the ACARS system to give the position of the plane. This would help the searchers narrow down the location where the plane was lost.
If military hardware (spy satellites) are being invoked anyway, then I suspect that if the plane were detected by technologies they didn't want to admit to they would use that knowledge to target more admissible sources of evidence.
As for going under the radar, I expect that a decent sized civilian aircraft probably doesn't have that option, especially over the ocean where *everything* above water is easily trackable (if boats show up on radar, a plane can't fly under it). I haven't been following the details of the story - but if this truly disappeared over the open ocean I think a far more relevant question would be range - from ground level the horizon is only about 50 miles away. Long-range radar as commonly used for air traffic control can apparently push 230 miles, but I suspect that's for high-altitude aircraft only, flying under the radar is much easier when you can hide behind the curvature of the Earth, and even 230 miles is pretty short range by ocean scales.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
have they found him or the Boeing 727-223 that he was last on and has not be found.
I was thinking about this yesterday. Doesn't the vast majority of modern aviation tracking radar systems depend pretty heavily, not just for identification but for returns at all at at long distances, on the planes own IFFtransponders for replies?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Could it not "drop off" the long range radar simply by turning off it's transponder? At that distance the radar return might be low enough that without the transponder response, it'd "disappear"...
Sure thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar
.
Yep. That's been true for decades.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
China is the big and important country. Only the dumbest of the dumb would try to deny.
Notably US is not dumbest of the dumb, that's why they're shifting their military to counter its growth.
Another thought. How low does a plane need to fly to "drop off the radar"?
First, Civilian radar depends on transponders, a small transmitted signal from the aircraft that is triggered by the Radar signal. This transponder responds with a "squawk code" (a 4 digit number assigned by ATC) along with some other basic information like altitude. Transponders make it unnecessary to get a "primary" return (i.e. they don't have to get the actual radar signal return) for the aircraft to show up. In fact, most civilian radar installations run with primary returns filtered out because they create visual noise for controllers, because weather and other noise shows up.
Second, the aircraft in question was at the far reaches of radar coverage. This tells me that a primary return was unlikely. In fact, the radar coverage for this aircraft was expected to end right about where it did. I"m told that radar coverage did not start back up for the next controller for a few min of flying time so a short time out of coverage was expected. They will pull the tapes and review for any primary returns, but I'm guessing this has already been done an it provided little information.
So, this tells me that something happened to the aircraft during the short time it was outside of coverage. What ever it was, it must have disrupted the flight controls and likely their communications ability, but it seems that the aircraft stayed largely in one piece, at least until it impacts the surface. If it was generally in one piece with say the vertical stabilizer disabled it could have flown a LONG way from the last position report.
It did NOT break up at altitude. Something rendered the aircraft uncontrollable. A loss of hydraulic pressure or power does this for a 777. Decompression at 35,000 feet can do significant damage to an aircraft's systems, plus it can incapacitate the flight crew in less than 10 seconds. Decompression can do this, without causing the aircraft to come apart in the air. Metal fatigue, fuel tank explosion, small explosive device, uncontained engine failure are all possible things that can cause decompression and all of these have happened before.
My guess is that they will find the aircraft tens even hundreds of miles away from the last known position, largely in one piece under water. The longer this takes, the further away from where it was last seen it will likely be. This is because they have found nothing yet. Much of an aircraft floats, so it sank in one major chunk with out spreading debris too far. This is not totally inconsistent with past aircraft crashes. KAL 007 flew nearly 20 min in a slow descending circle after being shot down. They will find it in a day or two.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I am not talking RADAR, but rather satellite-linked transponders relaying (at least) once per minute the plane "vitals" (coordinates, velocity, altitude, attitude, cabin pressure and temperature, fuel levels, any error codes or warnings). I mean, this may not be cheap, but it is meaningless cost-wise compared to the operational cost of a plane.
IANAATC, but...
Most center surveillance radars have a range of 200 - 250NM (ARSR-3, ARSR-4, AN/FPS-117, AN/FPS-67B). Secondary beacon radars have a range of about 190NM for 1090ES equipped transponders.
You are correct in assuming most high altitude center control ops, for aircraft in cruise, rely heavily on MODE-S data. This is transponder data and not primary radar echo return data.
Terminal radar, the kind you see at your local airport, mostly relies on primary radar data. But at a shorter range (~50NM).
The reasons for the difference are many, but come down to accuracy and overlap. Center controllers use a mosaic of data from multiple radars that must average primary returns, this leads to slight disagreements on the true location of the aircraft. The MODE-S data is constant though, so it is preferred. In terminal environments, there's usually a single radar set. So the primary data is more useful in terms of accuracy for spacing the aircraft (they can pack them in tighter more safely). Terminal radar sets also have a higher scan rate.
MH370 was over the Gulf of Thailand and was under coverage of about three different radars. Even if the transponder was turned off, primary return data would still be available for the track. CrimsonAvenger has a valid point, but the last known location of the flight was far off shore and at a cruising altitude. So we could possibly speculate that line of sight was not a big factor.
There's a lot of big mysteries and speculation at this point, but we just need to give it time. They will eventually find the wreckage and hopefully determine they cause. There are many historical crashes that required more searching than has been applied to MH370 (AF447). In the meantime, grab some popcorn and enjoy the conspiracy theories...
Time periods? Polar Bears? Smoke Monsters?
I disagree. The plane is hidden on a deserted volcanic island that's part of the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia.
The planes occupants (including Mik Kanrokitoff) are currently aboard a flying saucer. Most will reappear in due course suffering from amnesia.
So NOW do you see the advantage of a flat Earth?
It hasn't been activated for Malaysia Airlines Flight 307, nor was it activated for Air France Flight 447 in 2009 --one would think that they'd be all over this sort of thing like a cheap suit. Does anyone know why not? A computer search for a debris field that wasn't there during the previous pass would seem like a no-brainer.
http://www.disasterscharter.or...
A loss of hydraulic pressure or power does not do this for a 777. It has a RAT (ram air turbine) which pops out in such cases. Basically a big propeller which gets turned by the wind as the plane glides at 500 mph and generates enough power rudimentary electronics (including radio) and hydraulic pressure. That's what happened with the Gimli Glider - a 767 mistakenly loaded with insufficient fuel (the original boneheaded imperial vs metric conversion foul-up before the Mars Climate Orbiter). which basically turned into a 100 ton glider when it ran out of fuel mid-flight. The RAT popped out and allowed the crew to control the plane to a safe landing. (Which of course means if this did happen on MH370, the search area needs to be much larger than where they're currently looking).
Hydraulic failure usually involves structural damage which compromises all the hydraulic lines. Most commercial aircraft have 3 independent hydraulic systems; some have 4. If there's damage which severs lines in all of those systems, the plane can "bleed" hydraulic fluid until there's not enough left to control the flight surfaces. I believe the 777 used a hybrid fly-by-wire + hydraulic system though, where pilot commands are transmitted to the flight surfaces by wire, and a hydraulic pump there moves the flight surface. So severing the hydraulic lines may have killed one control surface, but not all. (Severing the wires OTOH...)
Anyway, I'm skeptical that it broke up at altitude too. That usually generates a lot of floating debris (papers, luggage, clothing, bodies, etc.) scattered over a wide enough area that the crash area is quickly located. The pingers should be firing away so it's just a matter of one of the search boats traveling within a few miles from the plane's resting location. (KAL007 wasn't located because the Soviets knew from their radar tracks where it went down, and set up decoy pingers far away to get the U.S. and South Korea to search the wrong location).
Primary return data is most likely available for the initial part of the descent (maybe down to 10,000 AGL), regardless of SSR MODE-S data. The Gulf is covered pretty well radar wise (not counting military sets) Ref: See page 2. The difficulty is collecting, combining, and analysing all the CD2 data from the primary returns. Even then, the general public may not be advised of the outcome of the analysis until well after the search.
I concur that it did not break up at altitude, otherwise the debris field would of been located relatively close to the flight path.
Other notable water crashes took many years to determine their final outcomes. I agree with the sentiment, we need to be patient and let the experts do their work.
That might be relevant if it wasn't in an area heavily monitored by military radar. There is some overlap between where it's expected to be visible on Malaysian and Vietnamese military radar. This does use primary returns, and a B777 is very visible. It must've fallen rather quickly to disappear from military radar so suddenly.
It hasn't been activated for Malaysia Airlines Flight 307, nor was it activated for Air France Flight 447 in 2009 --one would think that they'd be all over this sort of thing like a cheap suit. Does anyone know why not? A computer search for a debris field that wasn't there during the previous pass would seem like a no-brainer.
http://www.disasterscharter.or...
One plane going down is a tragedy.
100 planes all going down at once is a major disaster.
their non-orbiting satellites?
Simple. This doesn't meet the criteria required to activate a giant global collaboration of space agencies. There needs to be more than 200 people lost to invoke the charter.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Muslim terrorists using stolen passports smuggled a bomb on the plane. The tickets were purchased with cash by an Iranian for the users of the stolen passports. Smells fishy.
This is absolutely mind-boggling. I'm fairly certain that the US knows were every plane in the air is at any given millisecond. It is IMPOSSIBLE to simply lose a gigantic plane. What the hell does Asia do differently?
Yes, but each requires filling out entirely different forms. In triplicate.
Oh, sorry. I thought these were Indian satellites we were talking about.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ignore the gods, ignore the cultures; consider their screaming cries, on the wrong frequency.
You don't need global collaboration. There are privately owned imaging satellites with enough resolution 1m to detect anomalous debris floating around.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
So the US isn't repositioning its satellites? It seems to me that China these days are doing the things that America used to at the drop of a hat without a whim...
The pilot that you're talking about was an awesome guy that frequently posted on flight sim forums, posted youtube videos about how to save you money on your air conditioner and had a daughter, a family. He was a better human being then you'll ever be.
OK, You win.
How soon can you implement changeover?
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Why can a transponder be "turned off" anyway? On a civilian plane there is no reason whatsoever for a pilot to turn off the transponder.
It's so they can be re-purposed as bombers in times of conflict.
No sig today...
Why do they not have satellite location based reporting on the planes providing the planes position every five minutes? Expand the ACARS system to give the position of the plane. This would help the searchers narrow down the location where the plane was lost.
I think most airliners do just that. If not equipped with ACARS then they have to do HF position reports with regular frequency. However, I'm not sure how much that applies internationally, it is quite possible that procedures at Malaysian airlines aren't quite what they are with Lufthansa or United.
The vast majority of passports are stolen for mundane criminal purposes not terrorism.
http://www.independent.co.uk/v...
I'm somewhat familiar with the RAT system and I'm not discounting it.
What I'm saying is that we must have had multiple system failures. ALL power or ALL hydraulic pressure (both of which have multiple redundant and independent systems) or possibly an unfortunate combination of partial system failures. Such catastrophic failures should be vanishingly rare, and usually would be the result of a major structural failure and one would expect the breakup of the aircraft would result. In flight breakup didn't happen or we'd have found this thing by now.
I have two primary theories at this point. First, it's possible there was a windscreen failure or small structural failure near the cockpit that leads to decompression. In the confusion the crew fails or is unable to get their O2 masks in place within the 10 seconds they'd have at 35K feet. If they where flying manually or disconnected the flight director somehow (pushing on the yoke or peddles would do this) the aircraft could fly for quite awhile and end up way off course. As we where almost 2 hours into the flight, it's even possible that only one pilot was in the cockpit. My second theory is that there was an intentional crashing, either by hijacking or suicide. In any case, the aircraft flew for awhile after the incident and impacted the water well away from their expected location generally in one piece.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Yes, just in case you haven't been following all the coverage from the last three or four days, the United States has been providing a large amount of satellite data, even leveraging their missile launch detection system to search for possible explosions. The more interesting question is why it took the Chinese this long to provide satellite imagery to search for a plane full of primarily their own citizenry in its own region.
The is flight 370 - not 714... :-)
My best guesses are
a) The pilot flew the plane at a very low altitude to a deserted island, where there is no mobile signal. Why? We will find out...
b) The pilot dropped the plane intact into the sea (and hence no debris). Why? No one knows...
I think we will find out in the next few days...
Could it be that when emergency strike the crews panicked and started praying on their knees to their Allah and forgot to call for help ??
No. As my flight instructor told me, fly the plane first and if you have time, talk on the radio. If they where busy with multiple system failures the first task is to get control of the aircraft. If you don't have the aircraft under control, talking on the radio is the absolute WRONG thing to be doing unless there is time. ATC is required to ask you all sorts of useless questions and if you are struggling to control your aircraft the last thing you want or need is another distraction. "Nature of your emergency?" "Number of souls on board?" "What are your intentions?" Now if they can help you by suggesting the nearest airport, clearing the runway, getting the fire trucks rolling or getting search and rescue started by all means, get on the radio, but the first thing you do is FLY THE AIRPLANE.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Anyone happen to hear of any Aegis ships in the vicinity at the time?
Just asking.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I would agree except that apparently they don't know where it is or they would have found it by now. Something tells me that this aircraft headed below radar coverage quickly, then few for quite some ways before ditching. We have no ELT signals which says they are underwater. We have no debris so the aircraft stayed together until impact with the water (or longer).
Primary paint requires Line Of Sight and if the military radar is ground based this happened in about the worst possible location for coverage. The aircraft would have to be above the horizon to the radar site to be seen by radar. (OK, perhaps even a bit below it, but not by much). Coverage may be great for aircraft at altitude, but they are going to have to be thousands of feet up to be above the horizon for any land based radar where they where.
This is where the term "under the radar" comes from.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Malaysian military radar's last signal for what they believe was this flight was over the Straight of Malacca. More specifically it was roughly 300km NW of Kuala Lumpur. The radar signal that showed the plane possible turning around was roughly 750km NNE of Kuala Lumpur.
If that is true, it means the plane banked port, crossed over Thailand and was probably trying to return to Kuala Lumpur. It likely also touched down on water in one piece and became submerged with a limited debris field. I'm thinking that they'll find it by Friday, submerged in the Straight of Malacca, in mostly one piece.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Much more data being hidden by the govs. It's unlikely by govs to declare publicly the source of data if they reveal it as of now!! All these so called high level officials are just waiting to get a breakthough from the publically known sources!!!............. funny they won,t care for a bird or humans all the same
Malaysia military reported a radar response for the plane off the west coast of Malaysia over the Straight of Malacca.
What I suspect is they had a depressurization requiring descent to 10,000ft that dropped them off radar. Then they banked to port, turned off their transponder, flew over Thailand (made easier to not having a transponder on) to reach the Straight of Malacca in order to attempt to return to Kuala Lumpur. Why they didn't turn the transponder back on would be a good question but I bet they landed in water in one piece and was submerged.
Given that Thailand and Malaysia have had some soured relations recently....
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Plausible deniability. Civilian planes violating airspace can cause incidents.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Depressurization would require a descent that could drag the plane below altitude to be detected by radar. The more I look at the situation the more I believe that's what happened combined with the radio silence and IFF transponder being turned off because they were about to violate Thay airspace.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
That still makes no sense. Entering Thai airspace wouldn't be considered a violation for a civilian airliner in distress. Civilian airliners don't have "IFF transponders" either, just the usual aviation transponder. If they suffered loss of pressurisation and were still conscious enough to bring the plane down, the first thing to do would be activate emergency locator beacons, followed by distress call, letting ATC know what you're doing on the usual channel, and making sure your transponder is active.
Except that the comment I replied to was specifically in the context of "Why hasn't the Disasters Charter been activated to find this plane?" and the answer is, "because this isn't a disaster of great enough magnitude".
Though we're now learning that more than a couple of spy agencies are turning their surveillance resources onto the task (finally! The NSA might be good for something!)
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Deploy: to remove the ploy from something.
"Hey, I got too much ploy, who wants to deploy me?"
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
The airliners didn`t receive any Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) messages. So ,as you said ,there is a high possibility that ALL power had had lost.
Thanks for the insight and lets hope they return safe.
X-posted on Wired.com and elsewhere. -- Hey, I think we can solve this thing. Start with this model of what went wrong: After the plane got to cruising speed and altitude, some malfunction (in the altimeter, or autopilot, or gyro) caused it to enter a very shallow dive - like about 1/20 a degree shy of perfect horizontal flight. Flying over the ocean on a moonless night would not have offered anyone on the plane any information about altitude, so if the instruments were lying, the flight crew would not have known. The transponder is squawking ident and position but not altitude. After a while, the antenna receiving transponder squawks (back in Malaysia) goes under the horizon (from the plane's perspective), so at this point, the transponder squawks stop. Everybody is saying it was "switched off". It wasn't, it was too low to be heard in Malaysia. This happens at about the point that they would hand the plane off to Vietnam, which has not picked up any squawks or transmissions, perhaps for the same reason. In any case, the Vietnamese ATC folks are not yet tracking the plane. Nobody on or off the plane knows it, but the plane is flying too low, say ~15000 feet instead of 35000. The plane continues several hundred kilometers past the point of last contact and pancakes, either into the ocean south of Vietnam, or in the swampy southern reaches of Vietnam itself. At the moment of the crash, nobody on board suspects any trouble. The plane is not found because it is a long way from the point of last contact, and the searchers (who in that area are Vietnamese) overlook the debris .. or whatever. It's a big globe, after all. The plane would have skipped across the ocean at 700 nautical miles per hour, so who knows what was left of it?
Anyway, this boils down to a math problem. The location and height of the transponder tower should be find-able. The presumptive cruise altitude of the plane is known(call it cA = 35000), and we will assume that at the point it entered cruising altitude(call it pC, point Cruise), was correct. The location of the plane at the point when the transponder went dark is known (incidentally, the plane went dark "too soon" for a plane at 35000 - which fits) (call this point pD, for Darkness). Location and height of the tower are known(tL and tH). Use tH, cA, pC, pD and Earth's curvature to solve for the rate of descent (rD). Use pC and rD and azimuth to solve point X. Done.
Anyone want to take a stab at it?
If this is still around in the morning I might try myself. Been years since I took any math classes though ...
RDeW
PS. If the plane hit water at a shallow angle at 700 knots, it would shred. Fuel tanks, which trap air and float, would be confetti in Davey Jones' locker. Seat back cushions would be torn to bits by all that metal. There would be nothing big enough for a searcher to see from the air, far less from space.