Officials believe the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 that vanished with 239 passengers and crew on March 8 during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing veered far off course and crashed in the southern Indian Ocean.
Officials from Malaysia, Australia and China met in the Australian capital today to work out the next steps in the search for Flight 370, which will center on a patch of seafloor in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The Bluefin's original search area was a circle with a 6-mile radius, 2.8 miles deep around a spot where signals consistent with airplane black boxes were heard on April on April 8.
Meanwhile, data collected by a robotic submarine is being analyzed now that the sub has completed its first full 16-hour mission searching the ocean floor for wreckage from the plane and its two black boxes.
There's a fear that any pings from the plane's black boxes could die out at any time because the data recorders' batteries usually last about 30 days after a crash.
China's official Xinhua News Agency on Tuesday quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng as telling the Malaysian ambassador to Beijing that China wanted to know the specific facts that led Malaysia to announce Monday night that the plane had been lost.