The Australian-led hunt for the missing Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 since March 8 will move to a new search location based on new satellite data.

According to Australian officials, the next phase of the three-month long search will move hundreds of miles south of the original search area off of Western Australia.

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The new search area is located 1,800 kilometers off the city of Perth, said Martin Dolan, chief of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.

British satellite telecommunications firm Inmarsat plc said their data had pointed to a "hotspot," or a crash zone of highest probability, to the southwest of the recent undersea search.

Searchers will also map the seabed before any new search takes place. This mapping will be conducted by the Dutch-owned ship Fugro Equator and the Chinese vessel Zhu Kezhen.

Together, both ships will determine the exact shape of the sea floor. The information from these ships will be critical to guiding the underwater hunt.

Without proper depth data, searchers cannot choose the appropriate submersibles to look for the wreckage of MH370.

The ocean in the new search is six kilometers deep in places and the survey could take at least three months to complete.

Nearby areas were previously surveyed from the air, but the undersea search was concentrated to the north after pings were heard. After weeks of searching the ocean floor, however, search teams concluded the noises were unrelated to the missing jet.

MH370 disappeared en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 passengers on board.

TagsMalaysian Airlines Flight MH370, mh370