underestimate the difficulty of the search before us. dom is live in the west coast nows room. reporter: yes, harris, the prime minister said if they locate a smaller area where it most likely could be the black boxes, then perhaps six weeks or two months to scour that area. there on the map they have been searching, today saturday. and new maps from the australians showing they will extend the search. the ocean should is dragging the ping detector and it was back on tuesday last time we heard a ping. they need to close that area down or perhaps start looking somewhere else. the australians seem certain that the black boxes are somewhere close by. it is our intention to deploy the submersible.
the australians are edging closer. we have narrowed down very considerably narrowed down the search area, but trying to locate anything 4 1/2 kilometers beneath the surface of the ocean, about 1,000-kilometers from land is a massive, massive task. reporter: it is a massive task, which is why when they eventually dispatch a drone down to the bottom of the ocean right onto the bed what they hope to do at some point once they have a better idea of where it could be, that search could take between six weeks to two months. well, dominic, once they get a better fix on it, how do they think they ll pinpoint it? so far they ve been using that ping detector that goes down to 4600 feet. they actually have a specific submersible drone which goes
you want it to be found by rescuers or recovery team. it s designed to be unique and not readily found in nature. thomas, the ping detector that the chinese have on board is designed for use in shallow water, water as deep as 15,000 feet in these areas. is it possible to pick up a pulse that deep with this equipment? well so say it s designed to work in shallow water. that means the sensor only goes into shallow water. the ability for sound to propa investiga propagate and move through the water is very complex. there was a discussion about the water column and layers. that s very important how sound moves. so we would say that it is possible, but it s very unlikely. it would have to be the perfect set of conditions to have any frequency like 37.5 propagate
welcome back to the lead. continuing our world lead, missing malaysian flight 370 and signals that may be coming from the black boxes. separate pings were detected by an australian ship and a chinese ship. tonight we re learning the pings detected by australian s ocean shield were a lower frequency than the standard for black box pingers and the reliability of the information from the chinese ship is in doubt for many reasons. so is hope fading yet again? joining us now from boston, thomas altschuler. he has a company that manufactures the ping detector and from florida, chris from pinger maker duquesne seacom. chris, you confirmed to cnn the
is to find the black box first. all right. yes. last row. hi. su ling. regarding the ping detector, it s detected in the loneliest place on earth. so, what else could it be if it not belongs to the mh? and also, since it is also consistent with the frequency, is there any possibility it could be anything else but the black box? and also secondly, is there a possibility for the plane to have landed on the water in one piece, giving it a few minutes to actually probably deflate the lifeboats, and also, if so, is the operation also focusing on looking for survivors on life crafts and not just focusing on looking for the black box? i will only answer the part about the survivors, because the