For those of you interested... one of the key factors in determining that Flight 370 did not go north was Doppler data from the 7 pings. But some ask well wouldnt the Doppler be the same on both tracks... north and south? The answer is No. The reason is that the Inmarsat 3-F1 satellite is not 100% geostationary. It moves around a bit. It is said to follow a small figure 8 around the same point over a 24 hr time period. It is the fact that the satellite is in different positions relative to the stationary point that allowed them to predict the Doppler shift expected for each ping on both routes... north and south. South matches existing flight data for other 777 planes that have flown the south track. North does not and would require assumptions that are not reasonable or supported by evidence. In addition the north route requires the plane to be evading radar including advanced military radars of several countries including the Chinese. Given that this is a very large commercial jet and not a stealth bomber and that it does not have ground hugging capability to stay under radar by following terrain at a very low altitude, there is no way it could have gone north and given the ping data that it did. It went south. satellite-calculations/Satellite/Catalog/catalogID.php?23839
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 11:19:15 +0000