The satellite service used in an attempt to help find missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 says it stands ready to search for AirAsia flight QZ 8501 if necessary and has "tasked" its satellites to scan the area the plane was last seen.
Following the news of AirAsia flight QZ8501's disappearance from air traffic control radars on Sunday, DigitalGlobe's crowd-sourcing arm Tomnod said that if search and rescue teams deployed were unable to recover and rescue the missing plane, it would release satellite imagery and launch a crowdsourcing campaign.
"We will launch a Tomnod campaign as necessary," Tomnod said on Facebook.
The service later said it was "tasking" its satellites in order to collect imagery of the area of interest. As individual satellites don't cover the entire surface area of the globe, they need to be tasked - or assigned - to scour certain areas if they are not covering them already.
"We can't anticipate exactly when we will be able to collect images - it depends on daylight, weather and cloud cover," Tomnod said. "We will send an email out and notify people on Facebook and Twitter as soon as we launch a campaign."
Following the announcement, a number of Tomnod's 60,000 Facebook fans chimed in, saying they were ready to help.
"I am willing to search again!" wrote Jutta Thompson.
"Launch the campaign right now, lets help," wrote another,
In March, Tomnod joined the search for the vanished MH 370 flight, with 3 million ordinary internet users using its website to scan more than 24,000 square kilometres of satellite imagery to help find the aeroplane.
Tomnod subsequently released a picture of what appeared to be debris from a plane, floating on the surface of the Malacca Strait, an area previously combed for signs of the plane by Malaysia. To this day authorities have been unable to find the missing flight.
with Caroline Zielinski
