So the idea is that there's a shift on the intra-ping timescale? So there are numerous packets and each packet would have the frequency of that particular packet attached to it? Obviously I have no clue what the protocol for the ping looks like, just trying to understand how it would work.
Also curious how they matched it to planes flying the southern route, since I wouldn't have guessed there were any other planes flying on the southern route (which goes...nowhere).
Logged ping, base carrier frequency 1375.003762 MHz.
Logged ping, base carrier frequency 1375.003761 MHz.
Logged ping, base carrier frequency 1375.002961 MHz.
Then with some maths and comparing to the known positions of the plane (pre-contact loss) and known positions of the satellite you can work out which way the plane would have had to move to get the observed results once contact was lost.
(numbers in example made up, and likely aren't appropriate for satellite communications but you get the idea)
Well sure, but I don't know if doppler information between pings buys you much new info.
The pings, as I understand it, came an hour apart, and continued for 7-8 hours total. With just the pings themselves they were able to extract the distance from the sat, which is what led to those arcs they published last week. I dunno if doppler shifts from pings an hour apart add much to that.
Conservatively there are tens of thousands of commercial flights per day. They could use each flight as a test case to understand and refine the model of the original analysis and come up with something more accurate.
Also curious how they matched it to planes flying the southern route, since I wouldn't have guessed there were any other planes flying on the southern route (which goes...nowhere).