French Satellite 'Radar Echoes' May Have Found Debris

New satellite data from the French found objects that could be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the French Foreign Ministry confirmed today. 

Satellite radar echoes "identified some debris that could be from the Malaysia Airlines plane," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Romain Nadal told the Associated Press. 

The echoes, which can be converted into black-and-white images, do not have the same “definition like a photograph, but they do allow us to identify the nature of an object and to localize it," Nadal said.

They were picked up in the same area where earlier satellite images from China and Australia showed what could possibly be parts of the missing plane. 

A statement issued today by Malaysian authorities, which described the data as satellite images, said the information was relayed to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's rescue coordination center, but Australian search teams said they didn't find anything related to the missing jet during today's search. 

Searchers had returned to the waters and the skies above the Indian Ocean, hoping to find any trace of a pallet or a large object captured by a Chinese satellite that could be from the flight. 

"Our plan is to continue seeking -- to make sightings from the visual search, looking for the objects identified in the satellite imagery," John Young, with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, said today. 

The pallet, surrounded by several other objects including what appeared to be strapping belts of different colors, was spotted by a civilian search plane Saturday, but has not been closely examined, Mike Barton, chief of Australian Maritime Safety Authority's rescue coordination center, told reporters in Canberra, Australia. 

Wooden pallets are commonly used in shipping, but can also be used in cargo containers carried on planes.

"It's still too early to be definite, but obviously, we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft," Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.