The Singaporean submarine support and rescue vessel, MV Swift Rescue, is prepared before it departs to assist in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in Singapore, in this 9 March, 2014 handout picture.
The Singaporean submarine support and rescue vessel, MV Swift Rescue, is prepared before it departs to assist in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in Singapore, in this 9 March, 2014 handout picture. REUTERS/Singapore MINDEF

Hope that the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 jet will finally be found is up again after reports said that the pings are back. Four such signals were received on Tuesday afternoon and evening by the Australian ship Ocean Shield.

Prior to this, the last time the pings were received was Sunday, leading to speculations that the batteries powering the ill-fated plane's black box have run out of juice since these batteries often last only one month and the aircraft with 239 people on board has been missing for more than 30 days.

Air Chief Marhsall Angus Houston, head of the joint agency coordinating the search, said the first signal was 2 hours, 20 minutes, the second for 13 minutes, the third for 5 minutes, 32 seconds and the fourth for 7 minutes.

Experts from the Australia Joint Acoustic Analysis Centre studied the first two signals received over the weekend and analysis said it was not of natural origin but likely from specific electronic equipment.

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Following the receipt of the new pings, searchers narrowed the search zone to 75,000 square kilometres or 29,000 square miles about 1,400 miles northwest of Perth. It has been reduced from the previous 3 million miles.

Searching the zone are 11 military jets, four civilian planes and 14 vessels. However, Mr Houston said that despite the resumption of the pings, the Australian Navy would not yet deploy submersibles, changing its initial announcement a few hours earlier that it will resume underwater search for the Malaysian Airlines jet.