But Yardley was optimistic that the searchers will find the objects. "We will find it — I'm sure about that piece of it. The only reason we wouldn't find it was that it has sunk," he said of the large unidentified object spotted by the satellite.
"I've been on these missions before when it's taken a few days to come across it," he said.
Warren Truss, Australia's acting prime minister while Tony Abbott is overseas, told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that weather conditions in the search area were poor and may get worse.
"And so clearly this is a very, very difficult and challenging search. Weather conditions are not particularly good and risk that they may deteriorate," Truss said.
One of the objects on the satellite image was 24 metres (almost 80 feet) long and the other was 5 metres (15 feet). There could be other objects in the area, a four-hour flight from Australia, John Young, manager of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's emergency response division, said Thursday.
"This is a lead, it's probably the best lead we have right now," Young said. He cautioned that the objects could be seaborne debris along a shipping route where containers can fall off cargo vessels, although the larger object is longer than a standard container.
Truss said officials were checking more satellite images with stronger resolution to find out how far the objects might have shifted since the initial images were captured. "They will have moved because of tides and wind and the like, so the search area is quite broad," Truss said, adding marker buoys were dropped to help get a better understanding of what drift is likely to have occurred.
