The search for the Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 is perfect proof of the difficulties of locating objects at sea. In an effort to improve chances of finding lost ships and planes, researchers turned to using satellite imagery, exploring how satellites already in orbit can be utilized.

In a preliminary study published in the International Journal of Remote Sensing, researchers were able to identify 54 satellites in orbit with 85 sensors. These satellites are currently in use taking just images of land but researchers suggest that they can also be used to capture images of inland waters and oceans. Images captured can then be used to reduce search areas to just a few hundred square miles, drastically improving the likelihood of finding survivors out at sea.

"This isn't a surveillance system that monitors vessel movements across the oceans in real time, like radar tracking of aircraft in the sky," explained Nigel Bannister from the University of Leicester's Physics and Astronomy department, a co-author for the study.

Instead, researchers are proposing a system that records images of the ocean each time a satellite happens to pass over certain parts of the sea. Should a vessel be reported as lost, authorities can use the images captured by satellites to identify its last known location. From there, the search area can be narrowed down to speed up the time it would take to find the missing vessel and ultimately survivors from the mishap.

David Neyland, former assistant director for the U.S. Navy Office of Naval Research-Global and co-author for the study, praised the University of Leicester for bringing their research to the next level by making it possible for a public, open-source model to be built of an international virtual constellation made up of spacecraft hailing from 19 different nations. This provides a transparent view of operations in space at a level never done before!

Bannister and Neyland are now testing out their concept of using satellite imagery, working on automatically detecting all kinds of vessels within images taken by the UK-DMC2 and NigeriaSat2 satellites. These images were provided by DMC International Imaging with the cooperation of the New Zealand Defense Technology Agency.

Researchers are hoping that they will have a working system soon and that their work will be used as an active monitoring system within a few years. They are confident this is possible because existing satellites and technologies will be used.