澳軍艦測到與失蹤客機黑匣子相符的信號

Australian officials say a navy ship has detected new signals "consistent" with the black box data recorders of the missing Malaysia Airlines passenger jet.

Search chief Angus Houston told reporters Monday in Perth the development during the past day is the "most promising lead" so far in the search for the Boeing 777 in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia.

He emphasized that further confirmation is needed, which could take days, but he described the information picked up by the U.S. Navy ping detector as "very encouraging."

Houston said the detector towed by the Australian ship Ocean Shield had contact that lasted two hours and 20 minutes, followed by another contact of 13 minutes. He said this would be "consistent with transmissions from both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder."

Once a general position of the latest signals is confirmed, he said an underwater autonomous vehicle can be sent to investigate.澳大利亞官員說，一艘海軍艦隻又探測到與馬航失蹤客機黑匣子相符的信號。

搜尋行動負責人休斯頓星期一在珀斯對記者說，星期日的這一進展是在印度洋海域搜尋這架波音777客機以來“最有希望的線索”。

休斯頓強調指出，還需要進一步對此加以證實，這可能需要幾天時間，但美國海軍脈衝信號探測器捕捉到的信息非常令人鼓舞。

休斯頓說，澳大利亞軍艦“海洋之盾號”拖曳的探測器捕捉到的信號持續了兩小時20分鐘，後來又持續了13分鐘。休斯頓表示，這些信號與失蹤客機黑匣子以及駕駛艙錄音器發射的信號相符。

休斯頓說，一旦確定了信號最後發射的大致位置，就將派出自動水下航行器展開調查。