Australia's Acting Prime Minister Warren Truss says authorities are hopeful of a breakthrough in the search for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, after an Australian aircraft spotted the small pieces of debris.
Visiting the Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Canberra headquarters on Sunday, Mr Truss said the Indian Ocean search will continue "as long as there is hope".
"We hope that soon there will be more information available that might help to provide some kind of closure, or at least an understanding of what's happened, especially to the families of those who were on board Malaysia Airlines flight 370," he said.
Mr Truss's comments echoed those of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who earlier said an Australian civilian aircraft had on Saturday spotted debris in the southern Indian Ocean, including a wooden pallet.
It was still too early to say whether the debris was from an aircraft, Mr Abbott said in his latest update on the search.
March 22, 2014: Communication transcripts between the cockpit of Flight MH-370 and the control tower in Kuala Lumpur have shed light on the final minutes leading up to the plane's disappearance. It came as search efforts were bolstered as part of the
"But obviously we have now had a number of very credible leads," he told reporters in Papua New Guinea, also referring to new Chinese satellite imagery suggesting at least one large object.
"There is increasing hope, no more than hope ... that we might be on the road to discovering what did happen to this ill-fated aircraft."
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said several small objects were identified by a civil aircraft in Saturday's search and further searches would continue on Sunday to determine if the objects were related to the missing plane.
Four civil jets and four military aircraft were involved in Sunday's operation, which AMSA says would be a visual search based on the satellite imagery.
Mike Barton from AMSA's Rescue Coordination Centre said wooden pallets were quite common in the airline industry.
"We've gone back to that area today to try and refind it," he told reporters in Canberra.