MELBOURNE, Australia
An Australian naval vessel searching the Indian Ocean northwest of Perth has picked up two new signals in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, an Australian official said Wednesday.
The two signals were detected in overnight search by the Australian navy's Ocean Shield, said Angus Houston, the Australian head of a team co-ordinating the search for the missing plane in the southern Indian Ocean.
The search for the airliner, which was carrying 239 people on board when it went missing on March 8 en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, has been going on for one month.
As new data from radars and satellites was analysed, search team moved from waters off of Vietnam to the Strait of Malacca to end up to waters in the southern Indian Ocean.
"I think we are looking in the right area but I am not prepared to confirm anything until such time someone lays eyes on the wreckage," Houston told a press meeting.
The Ocean Shield is equipped with a special device that can detect signals from a plane's black boxes -- the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.
"Hopefully in a matter of days, we will be able to find something on the bottom that might confirm that this is the last resting place of MH370," said Houston.
He explained that the search is hard as a thick strata of alluvium on the sea can bloc detecting any possible remains from the plane or signals coming from the black boxes.
Moreover, locating the black boxes in such deep water would be an immensely difficult task -- if not impossible -- if the locator beacons, with a month battery life, blink off as Tuesday marked one month since the plane disappeared.
