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Satellite data on MH370 released

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Malaysia's government and the British satellite company Inmarsat released on Tuesday the data used to determine the course of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

The move was made in response to mounting calls from passengers' relatives for greater transparency.

The data, comprising satellite communications with the plane, occupy 47 pages in a report prepared by Inmarsat. The information includes hourly "handshakes" -network log-on confirmations – after the aircraft disappeared from civilian radar screens on March 8, Reuter sreported.

Families of passengers are hoping that opening the data to analysis by a wider range of experts can help verify the plane’s last location, nearly three months after the Boeing 777, carrying 239 people, including 154 Chinese passengers, vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Based on Inmarsat's and other investigators' analyses, the aircraft was believed to have gone down in the Indian Ocean, off western Australia.

Malaysian investigators suspect someone shut off MH370's data links, making the plane impossible to track, but investigators have so far turned up nothing suspicious about the crew or passengers.

On Tuesday, the Chinese relatives in Beijing said they had not received any of the data directly from Malaysian authorities. Wang Guanyi, a representative of the families, said he received a copy of the data from a Malaysian family member at about 2 pm. Wang said the latest report was too vague, with only two pages explaining the data.

"We don't know what all these figures mean; we have given them to some experts we know for help," he said.

About the broadcaster:

Anne Ruisi is an editor at China Daily online with more than 30 years of experience as a newspaper editor and reporter. She has worked at newspapers in the U.S., including The Birmingham News in Alabama and City Newspaper of Rochester, N.Y.