Acting Australian PM hopes to see breakthrough in MH370 search

Acting Australian Prime Minister Warren Truss said on Tuesday that given the encouraging development in the search of the missing Malaysian Flight MH370 in the past two days, he hoped breakthrough can be achieved on Tuesday based on previous works. [Special coverage]

"There will be a large number of aircraft, vessels involving in this search today. The weather conditions are quite good today, so let's hope today we'll be able to build up on the work of a couple of days ago and better establish what happened in the last moments of the flight," Truss told reporters in Sydney.

He said the contacts of possible black box signals by the Towed Pinger Locator onboard Australian Defense Vessel Ocean Shield two days ago were "obviously a time of great hope that there had been a significant breakthrough."

"It's obviously important for us to pursue this search with great vigor," he said. Truss, taking the role of acting prime minister while Prime Minister Tony Abbott is making his visit to Japan, South Koreaand China, admitted that it is a disappointment that so much efforts had been put in without having been able to deliver some results.

But he promised to continue to "pursue this search with vigor". Apart from the challenges of the deep water, the distance from the coast and the mixed weather conditions, Truss said investigators have to rely on incomplete satellite data and other information to try to unplug the cause of the aircraft.

As per the life of the battery of the black box, Truss said there are cases that the battery goes on for many weeks longer than it is mandated to operate for. "We hope that'll be the case in this instance," he said. "Clearly there is more urgency about the investigation. We will certainly take every available opportunity we can to bring this whole search to some degree of finality."