razak, he s making the statement he believes the plane went down in the south indian ocean based on this satellite analysis, you discussed this since the beginning, what do we know in terms of how dependable this new process is, what do we know about the analysis that they undertook? i think that what we re really talking about here on the part of mrsat, is really pushing the boundaries of what we have understood is the capability to pick up satellite data, the faintest pings and do advanced mathematical calculations to figure out where this plane might have gone, based on its speed, its trajectory, altitude, fuel consumption, et cetera; all of that going into an advanced mathematical calculation to decide, okay, the plane left malaysia, bound for vietnam, did a u-turn, we don t know why it
the southern indian ocean. and the families have been told there are no survivors. the malaysian prime minister said today that this new information is coming from a new analysis of satellite data. and he says it rules out that so-called northern corridor. so the focus, of course, on the southern indian ocean off the coast of perth. earlier today, our anderson cooper and richard quest spoke to an official from the company that did this new satellite analysis. the company is inmarsat. i want you to listen to his explanation how they came to this conclusion. it s very important. we have done something new. we have used the ability to work out the time differences between signals to and from our satellite and our network to give a direction of travel. that s what we did on the 11th and submit it had to the investigation. then we continued on, looking at those pings as they become known as, as hand shakes, and we have tried to look in more detail and compare it with our other similar f
grayer/green circular object. it s the best lead they ve had. nbc s tom costello, who s been following this story for us since the beginning, joins us now with more on the search. and tom, did it come down to that satellite analysis? yeah, mrsat, which was receiving those pings, you recall, off the acars system to a satellite 22,000 miles or so up in orbit, tried to refine that data even more. they had already suggested somehow this plane may have taken a southerly arc, you may recall, so they were trying to get a fix on these pings they were getting once an hour coming from the satellite and figure out, okay, where would this plane be, so now they believe that that last ping would put it somewhere in this juncture. so what does that mean? it means this plane probably came down like this. pay no attention necessarily to this original arc. what really matters is what is the location of the last ping and all suggests that it s