More signals raise hopes plane will be found soon

Two fresh underwater signals possibly from the missing Malaysian jet's black box have been detected with the head of the search team today expressing optimism about finding the final resting place of the aircraft "in a matter of days".
Australian ship Ocean Shield towing a pinger locater in the southern Indian Ocean yesterday reacquired two signals after earlier detecting two on Saturday.
All of the four "pings", heard possibly from the black box of the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, have been recorded within approximately 27 kilometres of one another.
"Ocean Shield has been able to reacquire the signals on two more occasions, late yesterday afternoon and later last night," Angus Houston, head of the Joint Agency Coordination Centre which is leading the search, said today.

Houston said the detection yesterday afternoon was held for approximately five minutes and 32 seconds and the detection late last night was held for nearly 7 minutes.
The new information has narrowed the search area to 75,000 sq km from yesterday's 77,580 sq km area.

In another major development in the search for the plane, Australian authorities analyzed the signals picked up on Saturday and determined that they were not natural occurrences, but likely came from specific electronic equipment. Some marine life make similar sounds.
"They believe the signals to be consistent with the specification and description of a flight data recorder," Houston said.

"I'm now optimistic. We'll find the aircraft or what's left of the aircraft in the not too distant future," he said.
"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," Houston said.
He said they were not yet at the point of deploying the underwater autonomous water vehicle.
"The better Ocean Shield can define the area, the easier it will be for the autonomous underwater vehicle to subsequently search for aircraft wreckage," he said.
Finding the black box is crucial for knowing what happened on March 8 when the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight MH370 with 239 people, including five Indians, disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

The batteries powering the black box are certified to be working for 30 days. Stored in a plane's tail, they are designed to begin sending off distinct, high-pitched pings or signals as soon as they come in contact with water.