Staff at satellite communications company Inmarsat work in front of a screen showing subscribers using their service throughout the world, at their headquarters in London March 25, 2014 (Reuters / Andrew Winning)

​New satellite images show more than 100 objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be pieces of wreckage from a Malaysian airliner that disappeared from radar on March 8 with 239 people on board, Malaysia's acting transport minister said.

Hishammuddin Hussein told a news conference on Wednesday that the
images were discovered by France-based Airbus Defence and Space
on March 23.

The findings mark the fourth set of satellite images to show
possible debris from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in a remote
part of the Indian Ocean situated about 2,500 km (1,550 miles)
south west of the Australian city of Perth.

Despite international efforts to locate the Boeing 777, no
confirmed pieces of the aircraft have been identified.

A pair of Chinese vessels are searching the area for a 2-metre
object spotted earlier in the day by an aircraft, state news
agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.

The latest lead in the mystery of the disappearing aircraft comes
one day after hundreds of friends and relatives of the passengers
of flight MH370 rallied outside the Malaysian embassy in Beijing
to protest what they call two weeks of “lies and misleading
information” from the Malaysian authorities.

Air Marshal Mark Binskin, Australia’s deputy defense chief, gave
a sobering reminder of how challenging the search will be.

“We’re not searching for a needle in a haystack – we’re still
trying to define where the haystack is.”

Meanwhile, search teams are facing definite time constraints if
they hope to retrieve the aircraft's black boxes,invaluable
sources of information to researchers in being able to say what
went wrong with the flight.

The black boxes emit a ping - a kind of homing signal to help
locate them; the battery supply is enough for 30 days after a
crash. This leaves search teams another 15 days or so to locate
them.