DHAKA: Three million people have joined an effort led by a satellite operator to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, in what may be the largest crowdsourcing project of its kind.

The satellite firm DigitalGlobe said on Monday that its search area now has some 24,000 square kilometers and that more images are being added daily, including a new area in the Indian Ocean.

The company said more than three million people have participated in the program, with some 257 million ‘map views’ and 2.9 million areas ‘tagged’ by participants.

The plane went missing early on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard, spawning a massive international search across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean that has turned up no trace of wreckage.

DigitalGlobe activated its crowdsourcing platform called Tomnod on March 11, inviting the public to look at the imagery from its five high-definition satellites to help in the search.

The response was so great it overloaded the system’s computers for a time last week, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 1241 HRS, MAR 18, 2014