Very cool! You too can help look Crowdsourcing the Search for Malaysia Flight 370

[CaféAuLait]

Crowdsourcing the Search for Malaysia Flight 370


Longmont, Colo.-based DigitalGlobe trained cameras from its five orbiting satellites Saturday on the Gulf of Thailand region where Malaysia flight 370 was last heard from, said Luke Barrington, senior manager of Geospatial Big Data for DigitalGlobe.

The images being gathered will be made available for free to the public on a website called Tomnod. Anyone can click on the link and begin searching the images, tagging anything that looks suspicious. Each pixel on a computer screen represents half a meter on the ocean's surface, Barrington told ABC News.

"For people who aren't able to drive a boat through the Pacific Ocean to get to the Malaysian peninsula, or who can't fly airplanes to look there, this is a way that they can contribute and try to help out," Barrington said.


Crowdsourcing the Search for Malaysia Flight 370 - ABC News


So if you have time and or the want perhaps you can help..


Reminds me of another site I use SETI@home.

 

[waltky]

Granny wonderin' if dat was the Rapture an' she missed it?...

Could Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 have slipped by radar?
March 18, 2014 -- Experts are divided over whether plane could have slipped past radar; Analyst: Radar blind spots could be determined "easily"; USS Kidd pulls out of the search for the missing plane; Despite efforts of 26 nations, no sign Monday of missing airliner

Could a massive passenger jet slip past radar, cross international borders and land undetected? That's a key question investigators are weighing as they continue the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished March 8 on a flight between Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Beijing. Radar does have some blind spots, and it's possible to fly at lower altitudes to avoid being spotted, analysts told CNN. But experts are divided over whether that could be what happened to the missing Boeing 777.

Jeffrey Beatty, a security consultant and former FBI special agent, says someone could have planned a route that avoided radar detection. "It certainly is possible to fly through the mountains in that part of the world and not be visible on radar. Also, an experienced pilot, anyone who wanted to go in that direction, could certainly plot out all the known radar locations, and you can easily determine, where are the radar blind spots?" he said. "It's the type of things the Americans did when they went into Pakistan to go after Osama bin Laden."

On Monday, the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times reported that the plane may have flown low to the ground -- 5,000 feet or less -- and used mountainous terrain as cover to evade radar detection. The newspaper cited unnamed sources for its reporting, which CNN could not immediately confirm. And a senior Indian military official told CNN on Monday that military radar near the Andaman and Nicobar Islands isn't as closely watched as other radar systems. That leaves open the possibility that Indian radar systems may not have picked up the airplane at the time of its last known Malaysian radar contact, near the tiny island of Palau Perak in the Strait of Malacca.

U.S. officials have said they don't think it's likely the plane flew north over land as it veered off course. If it had, they've said, radar somewhere would have detected it. Landing the plane somewhere also seems unlikely, since that would require a large runway, refueling capability and the ability to fix the plane, the officials have said.
Malaysian officials said Monday that they were not aware of the Malaysian newspaper's report.
"It does not come from us," said Malaysia Airlines CEO Ahmad Jauhari Yahya.

MORE

See also:

Planning could hold key to disappearance of Flight MH370
Mon Mar 17, 2014 - Whether by accident or design, whoever reached across the dimly lit cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines jet and clicked off a transponder to make Flight MH370 vanish from controllers' radars flew into a navigational and technical black hole.

By choosing one place and time to vanish into radar darkness with 238 others on board, the person - presumed to be a pilot or a passenger with advanced knowledge - may have acted only after meticulous planning, according to aviation experts. Understanding the sequence that led to the unprecedented plane hunt widening across two vast tracts of territory north and south of the Equator is key to grasping the motives of what Malaysian authorities suspect was hijacking or sabotage. By signing off from Malaysian airspace at 1.19 a.m. on March 8 with a casual "all right, good night," rather than the crisp radio drill advocated in pilot training, a person now believed to be the co-pilot gave no hint of anything unusual.

Two minutes later, at 1.21 a.m. local time, the transponder - a device identifying jets to ground controllers - was turned off in a move that experts say could reveal a careful sequence. "Every action taken by the person who was piloting the aircraft appears to be a deliberate one. It is almost like a pilot's checklist," said one senior captain from an Asian carrier with experience of jets including the Boeing 777. There is so far no indication whether the co-pilot was at fault or had anything to do with turning off the transponder. Pilots say the usual industry convention is that the pilot not directly responsible for flying the plane talks on the radio. Police have searched the premises of both the captain and co-pilot and are checking the backgrounds of all passengers.

Whoever turned the transponder to "off", whether or not the move was deliberate, did so at a vulnerable point between two airspace sectors when Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could easily assume the airplane was each others' responsibility. "The predictable effect was to delay the raising of the alarm by either party," David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flight International, wrote in an industry blog. That mirrors delays in noticing something was wrong when an Air France jet disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009 with 228 people on board, a gap blamed on confusion between controllers. Yet whereas the Rio-Paris disaster was later traced to pilot error, the suspected kidnapping of MH370's passengers and crew was carried out with either skill or bizarre coincidences.

Whether or not pilots knew it, the jet was just then in a technically obscure sweet spot, according to a top radar expert. Air traffic controllers use secondary radar which works by talking to the transponder. Some air traffic control systems also blend in some primary radar, which uses a simple echo. But primary radar signals fade faster than secondary ones, meaning even a residual blip would have vanished for controllers and even military radar may have found it difficult to identify the 777 from other ghostly blips, said radar expert Hans Weber. "Turning off the transponder indicates this person was highly trained," said Weber, of consultancy TECOP International.

NOT IN THE MANUAL

 

[mack20]

I mean, this worked out so well when crowdsourcing was used to try to find the Boston Marathon bombers...

It's very cool in theory, but there's a lot of room for it to spiral out of hand, IMO.

 

[CaféAuLait]

I mean, this worked out so well when crowdsourcing was used to try to find the Boston Marathon bombers...

It's very cool in theory, but there's a lot of room for it to spiral out of hand, IMO.

Sorry, how so? The satellite imagery is of water and land masses, not people. And as far as I recall, no one asked for the public to help with the Boston Terrorist Attacks, people took it upon themselves.

An aside, I posted this a week ago, someone commented and it was brought to the top today. As far as I know there have been no 'spiraling out of control' since this was first offered over a week ago by the company.

 

[Pop23]

I mean, this worked out so well when crowdsourcing was used to try to find the Boston Marathon bombers...

It's very cool in theory, but there's a lot of room for it to spiral out of hand, IMO.

Sorry, how so? The satellite imagery is of water and land masses, not people. And as far as I recall, no one asked for the public to help with the Boston Terrorist Attacks, people took it upon themselves.

An aside, I posted this a week ago, someone commented and it was brought to the top today. As far as I know there have been no 'spiraling out of control' since this was first offered over a week ago by the company.

One report yesterday stated that so many people logged on that it crashed the website.

 

[CaféAuLait]

I mean, this worked out so well when crowdsourcing was used to try to find the Boston Marathon bombers...

It's very cool in theory, but there's a lot of room for it to spiral out of hand, IMO.

Sorry, how so? The satellite imagery is of water and land masses, not people. And as far as I recall, no one asked for the public to help with the Boston Terrorist Attacks, people took it upon themselves.

An aside, I posted this a week ago, someone commented and it was brought to the top today. As far as I know there have been no 'spiraling out of control' since this was first offered over a week ago by the company.

One report yesterday stated that so many people logged on that it crashed the website.

I saw that and in fact was not able to log on for the first few days. It still runs very slow as well. It is hard because it does not give you a reference point, you just click on something which may appear suspicious, like a raft or oil slick.

I thought it was pretty cool so many people wanted to help though.

 

[waltky]

Search is a 'massive, massive task'...

Missing Malaysia Airlines plane search a 'massive, massive task' Abbott says
Sat April 12, 2014 ~ A mother's lament: "They only keep saying, 'We are searching'"; Abbott predicts a long slog; "We're optimistic," U.S. Navy commander says; Up to nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships search Saturday

Australia's Prime Minister repeated Saturday that he has a "high degree of confidence" that acoustic signals detected in the Indian Ocean are from at least one of the two black boxes from the missing Malaysian plane, but predicted that finding them remains a "massive, massive task." "It is likely to continue for a long time to come," Tony Abbott told journalists in Beijing, where he was on a diplomatic visit. Chinese officials appreciate Australia's "transparency and candor" in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, he said, adding "I think it's to our country's credit that we've approached it that way."

More than 35 days since the plane vanished from radar screens early March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, the search continued. As many as nine military aircraft, one civil aircraft and 14 ships were to assist in Saturday's search for the airliner, Australia's Joint Agency Coordination Centre said. The center of the 16,000 square-mile search area lies nearly 1,500 miles northwest of Perth. During Friday's search, only a small number of the objects sighted from aircraft and ships were recovered; as has been the case throughout the effort, none was linked to the Boeing aircraft, according to the Joint Agency Coordination Centre.

Still, the U.S. Navy commander leading the American effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 said he was "optimistic" about how the search is proceeding. The four pings detected in recent days were continuous and consistent with what a black box would emit, said Cmdr. William Marks. "We've ruled out that it was anything natural, or anything from commercial shipping, or anything like that." "I agree with the Prime Minister," Marks said. "We're optimistic."

Families skeptical

See also:

Missing plane MH370: HMS Echo in 'black box' search
12 April 2014 ~ The crew of a Royal Navy ship are "working 24/7" to hunt for flight recorders from the missing Malaysian plane, their commander has said.

HMS Echo is helping to scour the southern Indian Ocean after Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished with 239 people on board on 8 March. Sonar "pings" were detected last week by search teams - but no new signals have been confirmed since last Tuesday. Cdr Phillip Newell said the search was proving to be "challenging". Plymouth-based hydrographic survey ship HMS Echo was diverted from gathering data on its way from Oman to the Seychelles to help in the search.

The ship, whose specialist equipment has been adapted to pick up signals from the plane's black box flight recorders, arrived in the search area on Thursday. "I have a brilliant team, young, bright and enthusiastic and we are working 24/7 to cover the sea bed and observe on the surface," said Cdr Newell. Australian defence vessel Ocean Shield has been using a US Navy towed pinger locator to listen out for signals, which were detected twice last weekend and twice on Tuesday.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he was confident the signals were from the black box - but on Saturday he warned those signals were "rapidly fading". "No-one should underestimate the difficulties of the task still ahead of us," Mr Abbott warned. Cdr Newell said bad weather had also caused difficulties in interpreting the signals. "It's been challenging," he added. "Over the last couple of days we have been conducting oceanographic observations to support Ocean Shield. "The key thing is to help their understanding of what is going on, and how it is affecting the ocean column."

He said another challenge was directing Australian P-3 Orion aircraft which is dropping sound-locating buoys into the water. "It's key to make sure that we detect anything that can help in the investigation," he said. Search teams are trying to pinpoint the source of the signals so they can send down a robotic submersible to look for wreckage and black boxes. The search is also being helped by nuclear submarine HMS Tireless, which has advanced underwater search capabilities. Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when it lost contact with air traffic controllers last month.

Officials believe the plane flew off course for an unknown reason and went down off the west coast of Australia. But those involved in the search believe time could be running out because the battery life of a black box usually lasts for only a month - and that window has passed. Before arriving in the latest search area, HMS Echo had already searched 6,000 square miles (15,540 square km) of ocean 1,000 miles (1609km) north-west of Perth. Cdr Newell said the ship would continue to provide support until its tasking is reviewed later this month.

BBC News - Missing plane MH370: HMS Echo in 'black box' search

 

[R.C. Christian]

It's the aerial version of the Titanic.