There is "increasing hope" of finding out what happened to the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, according to Australian PM Tony Abbott.
"It's still too early to be definite, but obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads and there is increasing hope, no more than hope, no more than hope, that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft," he said.
Mr Abbott said there had been three "significant" developments in the search for flight MH370, which disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur more than two weeks ago with 239 passengers.
The first was the release by the Chinese government of a new satellite image showing a large floating object in the southern Indian Ocean which could be debris from the Boeing 777.
The search in the southern Indian Ocean is entering a fourth day The object, measuring 74ft (22.5m) by 43ft (13m), was photographed just 75 miles from where two other potential pieces of debris were spotted by a satellite. China has said further analysis is needed to determine if this is related to the plane.
Mr Abbott said this "does seem to suggest at least one large object down there consistent with the object that earlier satellite imagery discovered".
He also cited the sighting of a number of small objects in the southern Indian Ocean, including a wooden pallet, by a civilian jet on Saturday as a source of optimism.
The final development is the increased resources being deployed in the search of the zone around 2,500km (1,550 miles) southwest of Perth. Two Chinese aircraft and two planes from Japan have now joined the hunt.
The two objects spotted by satellite "The more aircraft we have, the more ships we have, the more confident we are of recovering whatever material is down there and obviously, before we can be too specific about what it might be, we do actually need to recover some of this material," Mr Abbott added.
The "really big international" search effort was praised by the PM, who said: "It is a very important humanitarian exercise.
"We owe it to the almost 240 people on board the plane, we owe it to their grieving families, we owe it to the governments of the countries concerned, to do everything we can to discover as much as we can about the fate of MH370."
Michael Barton, of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, said: "Today's search is about a visual search, a complete change of emphasis from earlier searching using radar.
The southern corridor and the area of ocean being searched "So we're into a more defined area based on the satellite's imagery."
The authority said the search operation had been split into two areas, with a total of eight aircraft involved in an operation that covers 22,800 sq miles (59,000 sq km).
The wing of a Boeing 777-200ER is approximately 27 metres (88ft) long and 14 metres (45ft) wide at its base, according to estimates taken from scale drawings. The fuselage is 63.7 metres (208ft) long and 6.2 metres (20ft) wide.
Tropical Cyclone Gillian But bad weather could affect the operation, after a cyclone warning was declared for Tropical Cyclone Gillian, which is forecast to move into the southern search corridor.
A cold front is predicted to move through the region later on Sunday, which could bring clouds and wind.
Countries in the northern search corridor, which includes China, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Laos, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, said there have been no sightings of the aircraft on their radar.
The search for the plane was narrowed to these two areas based on faint signals picked up by a satellite, which also suggest the plane flew on for six hours after it disappeared from air traffic control screens in the early hours of March 8.
Investigators believe it was deliberately diverted by someone on board.
The three most plausible explanations for the plane's disappearance are: hijacking, pilot sabotage and a crisis that incapacitated the crew and caused the plane to fly on auto-pilot, run out of fuel and crash.
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