A civil aircraft in the search spotted two objects that were probably rope, the agency said, and a New Zealand military plane spotted a blue object. None was found again when aircraft made further passes, the agency said on Twitter.
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Seven military reconnaissance planes — from Australia, China, New Zealand, the United States, Japan and South Korea — and five civil aircraft are making flights over the vast search area, which covers 469,407 square nautical miles.
And five ships, one from Australia and four from China, are in the search zone, Australian authorities said.
New satellite images provided by a French defense firm show 122 objects floating in the southern Indian Ocean, not far from other satellite sightings that could be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the Malaysian transport minister said Wednesday.
The objects were scattered over 154 square miles (400 square kilometers), acting Transportation Minister Hishammuddin Bin Hussein said.
Hishammuddin said he wasn’t sure if Australian authorities coordinating the search for the plane had been able to follow up Wednesday on the new satellite images, which came from Airbus Defence and Space.
“I’ll have to wait and see what reports come back from today’s search,” he said. “This new information has just been relayed to them.”
Search aircraft — back in the air Wednesday after a one-day weather delay — did spot three objects, but none were obvious plane parts, the Australian Maritime Safety Agency said.
Satellites have detected objects afloat in the ocean over the past week and a half. And Australian and Chinese surveillance planes both reported seeing items of debris on the surface this week, but so far nothing has been recovered or definitively linked to the missing flight.
Officials have warned that objects spotted in the water may turn out to be flotsam from cargo ships, and that finding anything from the plane could still take a long time.
“There’s always a possibility we might not actually find something next week or the week after,” Mark Binskin, vice chief of the Australian Defence Force, told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Tuesday. “I think eventually, something will come to light, but it’s going to take time.”