Jetliner 'Pinged' Satellites With Location, Altitude for Hours After Disappearance

The Wall Street Journal
Malaysia Airlines missing jet transmitted its location repeatedly to satellites over the course of five hours after it disappeared from radar, people briefed on the matter said, as searchers zeroed in on new target areas hundreds of miles west of the plane's original course.

The satellites also received speed and altitude information about the plane from its intermittent "pings," the people said. The final ping was sent from over water, at what one of these people called a normal cruising altitude. They added that it was unclear why the pings stopped. One of the people, an industry official, said it was possible that the system sending them had been disabled by someone on board.

The people, who included a military official, the industry official and others, declined to say what specific path the transmissions revealed. But the U.S. planned to move surveillance planes into an area of the Indian Ocean 1,000 miles or more west of the Malay peninsula where the plane took off, said Cmdr. William Marks, the spokesman for the U.S. Seventh Fleet.

He said the destroyer USS Kidd would move through the Strait of Malacca, on Malaysia's west coast, and stay at its northwest entrance. Malaysia, which is overseeing the search effort, directed Indian forces to a specific set of coordinates in the Andaman Sea, northwest of the Malay peninsula, an Indian official said Thursday. "There was no specified rationale behind looking in those areas, but a detailed list was provided late Wednesday evening," the Indian official said.

The automatic pings, or attempts to link up with satellites operated by Inmarsat PLC, occurred a number of times after Flight 370's last verified position, the people briefed on the situation said, indicating that at least through those five hours, the Boeing Co.777 carrying 239 people remained intact and hadn't been destroyed in a crash, act of sabotage or explosion.

Malaysia Airlines said it hadn't received any such data. According to Boeing, the plane's manufacturer, the airline didn't purchase a package through Boeing to monitor its airplanes' data through the satellite system.

If the plane remained airborne for the entire five hours, it could have flown more than 2,200 nautical miles from its last confirmed position over the Gulf of Thailand, the people said.


U.S. aviation investigators said they were analyzing the satellite transmissions to determine whether they can glean information about the plane's ultimate location or status. The transmissions were sent via onboard technology designed to send routine maintenance and system-monitoring data back to the ground via satellite links, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Among the possible scenarios investigators said they are now considering is whether the jet may have landed at any point during the five-hour period under scrutiny, or whether it ultimately crashed.

Aviation investigators are exploring the possibility that someone on the plane may have intentionally disabled two other automated communication systems in an attempt to avoid detection. One system is the transponders, which transmit to ground radar stations information on the plane's identity, location and altitude, and another system that collects and transmits data about several of the plane's key systems.

The widebody jet was scheduled to fly overnight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur in the predawn hours of March 8. Its transponders last communicated with Malaysian civilian radar about an hour after takeoff.

After the plane dropped off civilian radar screens, two people said, the satellite link operated in a kind of standby mode for several hours and sought to establish contact with a satellite or satellites. These transmissions didn't include data about any of the plane's critical systems, they said, but the periodic contacts indicate to investigators that the plane was still intact and believed to be flying at least a significant portion of that time. All of the people said the transmissions included detailed information about the plane's location, speed and bearing.

The transmissions, one person said, were comparable to the plane "saying I'm here, I'm ready to send data."

The uncertainty about where the plane was headed, and why it apparently continued flying so long without working transponders and other communication links, has raised theories among investigators that the aircraft may have been commandeered for reasons that remain unclear to U.S. authorities.

At one briefing, according to one of the people, officials were told that investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted "with the intention of using it later for another purpose."

As authorities scramble to analyze and understand all of the transmissions from the missing 777, the situation continues to change rapidly. Some people briefed on the issue initially described the transmissions as information that had been relayed from onboard monitoring systems embedded in the two Rolls-Royce PLC Trent 800 engines, not the idling satellite communications system.

BREAKING: Missing Malaysian airliner may have tried to turn back

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- International intelligence agencies joined the investigation Sunday into two passengers who boarded the missing Boeing 777 jetliner with stolen passports, as Malaysian authorities said radar images showed the plane may have turned back before vanishing.

More than a day and half after Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 went missing, no debris from the plane had been found, and the final minutes before it disappeared remained a mystery. The plane, which was carrying 239 people, lost contact with ground controllers somewhere between Malaysia and Vietnam after leaving Kuala Lumpur early Saturday morning for Beijing.

A massive international sea search has so far turned up no trace of the jet, though Vietnamese authorities said late Sunday that a low-flying plane had spotted a rectangular object in waters about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of Tho Chu island, in the same area where oil slicks were spotted Saturday. State media speculated the object might be from the missing plane.


The missing plane apparently fell from the sky at cruising altitude in fine weather, and the pilots were either unable or had no time to send a distress signal - unusual circumstances under which a modern jetliner operated by a professional airline would crash.

Malaysia's air force chief, Rodzali Daud, said radar indicated that the plane may have turned back, but did not give further details on which direction it went or how far it veered off course.

"We are trying to make sense of this," Daud said at a news conference. "The military radar indicated that the aircraft may have made a turn back, and in some parts this was corroborated by civilian radar."

Malaysia Airlines Chief Executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya said pilots are supposed to inform the airline and traffic control authorities if the plane does a U-turn. "From what we have, there was no such distress signal or distress call per se, so we are equally puzzled," he said.

Authorities were checking on the identities of the two passengers who boarded the plane with stolen passports. On Saturday, the foreign ministries in Italy and Austria said the names of two citizens listed on the flight's manifest matched the names on two passports reported stolen in Thailand.

"I can confirm that we have the visuals of these two people on CCTV," Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said at a news conference late Sunday, adding that the footage was being examined. "We have intelligence agencies, both local and international, on board."

Hishammuddin declined to give further details, saying it may jeopardize the investigation.

"Our focus now is to find the aircraft," he said, adding that finding the plane would make it easier for authorities to investigate any possible foul play.

White House Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken said the U.S. was looking into the stolen passports, but that investigators had reached no conclusions.

In addition to the plane's sudden disappearance, which experts say is consistent with a possible onboard explosion, the stolen passports have strengthened concerns about terrorism as a possible cause. Al-Qaida militants have used similar tactics to try and disguise their identities.

Still, other possible causes would seem just as likely at this stage, including a catastrophic failure of the plane's engines, extreme turbulence, or pilot error or even suicide. Establishing what happened with any certainty will need data from flight recorders and a detailed examination of any debris, something that will take months if not years.

European authorities on Saturday confirmed the names and nationalities of the two stolen passports: One was an Italian-issued document bearing the name Luigi Maraldi, the other Austrian under the name Christian Kozel. Police in Thailand said Maraldi's passport was stolen on the island of Phuket last July.

A telephone operator on a China-based KLM hotline on Sunday confirmed that "Maraldi" and "Kozel" were both booked to leave Beijing on a KLM flight to Amsterdam on March 8. Maraldi was then to fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, on KLM on March 8, and Kozel to Frankfurt, Germany, on March 8.

She said since the pair booked the tickets through China Southern Airlines, she had no information on where they bought them.

Having onward reservations to Europe from Beijing would have meant the pair, as holders of EU passports, would not have needed visas for China.

Meanwhile, the multinational search for the missing plane was continuing. A total of 34 aircraft and 40 ships have been deployed to the area by Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, China and the United States, in addition to Vietnam's fleet.

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US moves fighters to Baltic in lieu of Crimean tensions

The U.S. military is increasing its presence in Poland and the Baltics in response to the crisis in Ukraine, officials said Wednesday.

The U.S.military will deploy more jets to Britian including six F-15 fighters, one KC-135 re-fueler — to Siauliai Air Base in Lithuania, according to a U.S. defense official

In addition a dozen F-16s and 300 military will deploy next week to Lask air base in central Poland, for a combined exercise with the Polish Air Force.

The U.S. already has four F-15s in Lithuania as part of a NATO’s Baltic air policing rotation — jets that fly patrols and respond to airspace violations in the Baltics.

The NATO air patrols have been in place for a decade and include military aircraft from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and Czech Republic.

At the request of Poland, the Pentagon is beefing up the number of U.S. airmen assigned to an aviation detachment in Poland that trains the Polish Air Force.

The United States has 10 Air Force personnel there now, as well as F-16s and C-130s. The U.S. defense official could not say how many additional airmen would go to Poland, but did say that they would arrive sometime this week — likely tomorrow.

In a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel refused to speculate on what the United States military response would be if Russian troops, who now control Crimea, advance toward Kiev.

Hagel also said supplying additional arms to Ukraine would be a joint NATO or presidential decision.

Canada is sending two observers to track military activities on the Crimean peninsula, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement Wednesday.

Russia sinks one of its own ships to block entrance to Black Sea

Yevpatoria, Ukraine: An anti-submarine boat may have been the first casualty of the Russian incursion into Crimea, but it was hardly an act of violence, much less war: The Russian navy sank one of its own, junked vessels to create an obstacle, a Ukrainian official said on Wednesday.

Ukraine Defence Ministry spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Mazepa said Russian sailors pulled the anti-submarine vessel Ochakov out of a naval junkyard and sank it in the straits that connect the Black Sea with a body of water known as Donuzlav Lake. He said the act was intended to prevent Ukrainian navy ships from leaving a nearby base and going to sea.

The sinking was the latest in a series of moves by Russian naval forces in the area that were jangling the nerves of Ukrainian officers.

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Lockheed Martin to build next gen quantum computer

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Mar. 5, 2014 – Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] and the University of Maryland are partnering to develop an integrated quantum computing platform that has the potential to enhance fields ranging from drug discovery and communications to logistics.

The parties signed a memorandum of understanding today establishing the Quantum Engineering Center at the University of Maryland, College Park.  

“Classical computing can only take us so far,” said Dr. Ray O. Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “In the future, critical systems will become so complex that problems will take too long or become too expensive to solve using even our most powerful supercomputers. We believe the next computational revolution will stem from applied quantum science—a discipline that connects physics, information science, and engineering.”

Building on more than 60 years of collaboration, Lockheed Martin and the University of Maryland signed a formal strategic framework in 2010 to jointly pursue research and development projects and business opportunities. The Quantum Engineering Center is the most recent opportunity to push the boundaries of scientific discovery and innovation.

“By building on our world-class research expertise, the University of Maryland will transform the study of quantum mechanics into the practice of quantum engineering through this unique partnership with Lockheed Martin,” said Dr. Mary Ann Rankin, senior vice president and provost of the University of Maryland, College Park. “Together, we will bring multidisciplinary methods to an area that has the potential to transform the lives of citizens around the globe.”

The initial goal of the Quantum Engineering Center is to demonstrate a quantum platform that features reliable, well-characterized operation without requiring a user to have a deep understanding of the internal workings of the system—just like conventional computers work today. To achieve this will require close cooperation between scientists and engineers.

“In the case of quantum components, it’s like we’re back in 1947 working with the first semiconductor transistors,” said Dr. Chris Monroe, Bice Zorn professor of physics at the University of Maryland. “We are talking about unusual systems— specially tuned laser and microwave fields trained with exquisite precision onto individual atoms suspended with electrical fields and immersed in a vacuum chamber a million times less dense than outer space. Each aspect is challenging in its own way, but we understand exactly how every piece works. Our focus now is integrating these systems to consistently and reliably work in harmony, much like engineering a complex aircraft, so that the device is more than just a sum of its parts.”

About the University of Maryland

The University of Maryland is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 37,000 students, 9,000 faculty and staff, and 250 academic programs. Its faculty includes three Nobel laureates, two Pulitzer Prize winners, 49 members of the national academies and scores of Fulbright scholars. The institution has a $1.8 billion operating budget, secures $500 million annually in external research funding and recently completed a $1 billion dollar fundraising campaign.

About Lockheed Martin

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 115,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration, and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products, and services. The Corporation’s net sales for 2013 were $45.4 billion.