It has been 30 days since Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 vanished and in the worst-case scenario the beacon on the plane's black box may have run out of power and stopped sending signals vital to its discovery.
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The Australian navy support vessel Ocean Shield reached the Indian Ocean search zone off the West Australian coast on Friday, towing a black box pinger locator.
Although black box beacons have a battery life of about 30 days, they have been known to continue emitting signals for months longer.
The underwater component of the international search mission has only just begun.
The pinger locator can detect a box's signals, but only from 1.6 kilometres away. The search for wreckage is in 217,000 square kilometres of ocean north-west of Perth.
The air search has reached its fourth week and, although it has turned up many object sightings, none has been related to the missing flight. As many as 10 military planes, three civil aircraft and 11 ships were searching on Saturday
Rania Spooner, Amy McNeilage
