Malaysian officials released 45 pages of raw satellite data from missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 today.
The data came from mobile satellite communications company Inmarsat Plc, and contained the automatic transmissions sent from the plane to the satellite on its ill-fated journey March 8.
Flight 370 disappeared that day while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. 239 people were on board.
British scientist and astronomer Duncan Steel criticized the Malaysian government for waiting nearly three months to release the data.
"One can see no conceivable reason that the information could not have been released nine or 10 weeks ago," he told the Associated Press.
Initial response to the newly released raw data has been negative. Satellite engineer Michael Exner said the report is filled with irrelevant information.
"It's a whole lot of stuff that is not very important to know," he told AP. "There are probably two or three pages of important stuff, the rest is just noise. It doesn't add any value to our understanding."
Some family members of the Flight 370 passengers were disappointed that the report did not explain how experts deduced that the plane took a southern, diverted flight path.
"We are not experts and we cannot analyze the raw data, but we need to see the deduction process and judge by ourselves if every step was solid," Steve Wang, whose mother was on board, insisted. "We still need to know where the plane is and what is the truth.
No debris or evidence of a crash site have been found since the search began on March 8. Malaysian officials say the search will be suspended May 28, and will resume in several months with new equipment and a larger search area.
New sonar devices will be used, and the search area will expand to 60,000 square kilometers (23,000 square miles). The last detected position of Flight 370 was in the middle of the southern Indian Ocean, off the coast of Perth, Australia.
Despite the odds of finding surviving passengers, family members have not given up hope.
"We know the likelihood that our beloved ones have survived is slim, but it is not zero," Wang said.
