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This page will be updated with news regarding the search for the black boxes. Last updated 1:31 p.m.

The Emeraude, a French nuclear submarine, reached the Air France Flight 447 search site Wednesday to aid in the hunt for the missing plane’s cockpit recorders.

French military officials said the sub started surveying waters near the suspected crash site of‚  Wednesday morning.

France also sent two boats towing approximately 40 tons of recovery equipment, a surveillance ship, and the Nautile, a mini sub that will be sent to the ocean’s floor in case the black boxes are retrieved, CNN reports.

Plane debris was spotted about 600 miles of the coast of Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands, which are in turn a 200 miles north-east of Brazil’s coast. It is here the sub will begin its search.

French military spokesman Captain Christophe Prazuck said the Emeraude will be able to cover about 13 square miles of ocean every day. While traversing tough waters, the ship will actively be searching for the downed plane using advanced radar equipment.

To help locate the emergency beacons attached to the flight’s data recorders, two French vessels will be outfitted with two high-tech U.S. acoustic search devices. The devices can detect emergency beacons emitting from up to 20,000 feet underwater. The average depth of the immensely large search area (77,220 square miles) is about 9,900 feet.

The first ship was outfitted with one device Wednesday. The second ship set to carry the other device won’t arrive until next week, CBC reports.

“There are big uncertainties about the accident site, the ocean floor is rugged… so it’s going to be very difficult”¦it’s going to be very complicated and we’re going to need a lot of luck” Prazuck told French radio, BBC reports.

The emergency beacons attached to the flight’s data recorders will only transmit a signal for about 20 more days.

If French searchers are able to locate the recorders, the Nautile, the same ship that explored the wreckage of the sunken Titanic, will be sent to down to recover them.

All wreckage will be taken back to France for investigation. All bodies found, of which there are currently 41, will be shipped back to Recife, Brazil for investigation and identification.

Click here for updates on bodies found and developments in the plane crash investigation.

Scroll down for updates. Last updated June 10 at 12:30 p.m. This piece will be updated several times a day.

Forty-one bodies have been found in the Atlantic thus far, two on Saturday, 14 on Sunday, eight on Monday, and 17 on Tuesday, all confirmed to have been on Air France Flight 447, Brazilian officials said Wednesday. Four have been confirmed male and four female.

The first set of bodies were found about 200 miles off the coast of the Saint Peter and Saint Paul archipelago. Tuesday’s findings were discovered 50 miles away.

Sixteen of the 41 bodies found will reach Recife today. The remains will be shipped to the Legal Medical Institute in Brasilia for investigation and identification, CNN reports. DNA samples must be taken from the relatives of the deceased to help with the investigation

The bodies of the other 25 found victims will go through the same process on Thursday, CNN reports.

Investigators hope they can use dental records and DNA samples to identify each of the found bodies.

Officials say the location of the found remains is not an indicator of the crash site, since the current in the area is very strong the bodies would no doubt have drifted far away since Monday. They are however unsure exactly how far the bodies drifted.

Just days before the first bodies were discovered, officials told families the possibility of finding any remains were extremely low. Relatives are now increasingly hopeful they will at least be reunited with their lost kin.

One CNN reporter noted that the bodies looked bloated after days of floating in the ocean.

Other items were recovered as well, about 700 miles off the coast of Brazil. They include part of the plane’s wing and tail, two seats, luggage, a life vest and a leather bag with a Flight 447 boarding pass still inside, according to CNN.

An oxygen mask was also found, which could reinforce the automated message’s claim that the plane was losing cabin pressure.

Brazilian officials say their number one priority is to find as many bodies as possible and to return them to grieving families. They are also placing much importance on finding pieces of the plane, which they say will aid in the crash investigation.

French nuclear sub arrives

France deployed a nuclear sub, the Emeraude, to help find the sunken black boxes. The sub arrived Wednesday and is actively searching for the downed plane.

Also, two American acoustic devices are to be placed aboard two French ships. The devices will try to pick up signals from the plane’s sunken recorders, still pinging at the bottom of the ocean.

The devices can search for the beacons to a maximum of 20,000 feet.

Improper speed could be plane crash culprit

Air France and French officials are in charge of finding out what caused the Air France plane to plunge into the Atlantic without any manual warning. It is currently being speculated that the plane broke up in flight.

However without the black boxes, investigators may never know for certain why the plane crashed.

The plane sent out four minutes of automated messages before going down. The messages suggest the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through a heavy storm, possibly due to malfunctioning Pitot tubes. Air France will soon replace Pitot tubes on all of its medium- and long-haul Airbus jets.

Malfunctioning Pitot tubes could have caused the Air France airliner to decelerate and accelerate too rapidly for a storm of such magnitude. The storm faced by the plane, reportedly, sucked up water from the ocean below with 100 mph updrafts. The wet air then rapidly froze at the plane’s high altitude, causing major turbulence and possibly resulting in the Pitot tubes sending improper speed readings to the jet’s on board computers.

Air France told its pilots’ unions that no Airbus A330 or A340 will take off unless two of three Pitot tubes have been replaced, CNN reports.

Plane may have broken up in-air

CBC reports the Brazilian navy has found a large piece of the tail of Flight 447. The navy revealed the vertical stabilizer – which forms part of the tail -was recovered whole in the ocean.

William Waldock, an air crash investigation professor told the Associated Press that piece has what looked like lateral damage. This would reinforce the theory that the plane broke up in-air.

“If it hits intact, everything shatters in tiny pieces,” said Waldock, CBC reports. Further examining the piece can indicate from which direction the force that caused the stabilizer to detach from the Airbus came.

As questions about Airbus A330 safety arise, several airlines have rushed to its defense.

“It is a very robust airplane. It has been flying for many years, clocking hundreds of millions of hours and there is absolutely no reason why there should be any question over this plane. It is one of the best flying today,” said Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, at a conference in Kuala Lumpur.

However on Wednesday, an Airbus A320 flying from the Canary Islands to Olso, Norway had to make an emergency landing after the pilot detected a “problem with the engine.” There were reportedly 189 passengers on board, none of whom were injured. All are expected to take another flight, though many will perhaps inquire about the make and model of their new plane.

The mystery surrounding Air France Flight 447 continued to grow Thursday as conflicting reports from Spanish pilots and Brazilian experts regarding the cause of the plane’s crash emerged, CNN reports.

Two Spanish pilots say they witnessed an “intense flash” in the area where AF447 plunged into the Atlantic, while a Brazilian minister has all but ruled out a mid-air explosion.

Brazil’s defense minister says the oil slick in the ocean is evidence the plane did not break up until it hit the water. That would rule out the possibility that the plane split in half or exploded before crashing.

According to the two pilots who were flying an Air Comet flight from Lima to Lisbon, “”¦we saw in the distance a strong and intense flash of white light, which followed a descending and vertical trajectory and which broke up in six seconds.”

A report in France’s Le Monde newspaper suggests yet another possibility, that the pilots were not flying the correct speed while navigating through the intense storm. Airbus had recently sent out recommendations to pilots of A330 jets with new advice on how to traverse bad weather conditions. The pilots may not have followed this advice.

The number of conflicting reports adds nothing but uncertainty and frustration to an investigation that is already being viewed as hopeless by many officials.

Brazilian ship arrives as search continues

While experts were speculating, the first Brazilian ship arrived on the crash site. Planes still circling the area say they found more, larger debris, but have yet to see any bodies or remains. All 228 passengers and crew are believed to be dead.

The 23-foot piece of plane that was discovered yesterday is believed to be part of the fuselage or tail, BBC reports. CNN reports that because of the distance between debris findings, the search area has been widened to 300 miles.

Officials are still not optimistic that the recorders, which could be buried more than a couple miles below water, will ever be found. Their beacons can only transmit signals for 30 days.

Deep water submarines – key to the discovery and recovery of the black boxes – are not expected at the suspected crash site until next week.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared early Monday on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Reports came in on Wednesday that a bomb threat was called in on an Air France flight from Buenos Aires to Paris a few days earlier. The threat was deemed fake and, at this time, there seems to be no connection between the AF447 crash and the threat.

French officials have invited the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board to aid in the investigation, CNN reports. The NTSB accepted.

Messages give some clues

The missing plane sent a number of electronic messages before disappearing off radar. According to Air France, the plane first sent a message saying it was entering thick black clouds, which are normally associated with lightning and high winds. According to U.S. transportation experts these conditions are not uncommon off the Brazil coast.

Ten minutes later automatic messages were sent indicating that the autopilot had been disengaged and that a main computer on the plane was switched to alternative power, signaling electric failure.

Next, according to the messages, stabilization controls were damaged, the pilots could no longer see information like altitude or even speed (which could corroborate French testimony) and an alarm sounded, indicating the situation was getting much, much worse.

The flurry of messages ended with one indicating a loss of air pressure throughout the A330 and mass electrical failure.

The plane then crashed.

Update:

The Brazilian navy began retrieving pieces of Air France Flight 447 today. CNN reports helicopters were lifting debris and dropping them onto three Brazilian vessels.

“The clock is ticking on finding debris before they spread out and before they sink or disappear,” said French military spokesman Christopher Prazuck, CBC reports. “That’s the priority now, the next step will be to look for the black boxes.”

The Porquoi Pas, a French research ship carrying mini-submarines, won’t arrive until June 12, Prazuck said. One of the subs, the Nautile, was used to explore the underwater wreckage of the Titanic.

Not much is happening today. No remains have been reported as of yet, though CBC reports soldiers at Fernando de Noronha airport were seen unloading body bags and a refrigerator truck from a military helicopter. Any remains, if found, would be taken there.

The biggest development came out of France today, when a report in French newspaper Le Monde reported the plane may have been flying at an improper speed through the storm. This is a possibility since electrical failures reportedly knocked out many of the planes measuring instruments.

Still, experts can only speculate until the black boxes are found. If they ever are.

Scroll down for updates.

French investigators say they are not optimistic the black box recorders from Air France Flight 447, now buried deep in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean, may ever be found, CBC reports.

Speaking at a press conference Wednesday Paul-Louis Arslanian, head of France’s accident investigation agency, told reporters that planes in the area had not yet picked up any signals from the beacons attached to the recorders. The beacons can only transmit electronic indicators for 30 days.

“We may be unable to find the black boxes due to circumstance and logistics,” said Arslanian, citing the underwater area’s mountainous landscape.

“This catastrophe – which is the worst that our country has witnessed in terms of aviation, took place in a very difficult region… so the investigation will not be easy… but we are not giving up” he added later, CBC reports. Experts say the underwater terrain could make this one of the most difficult recovery missions cine the Titanic.

French and Brazilian forces have deployed ships to survey the area. France has sent a research ship equipped with two mini-submarines that will be used to recover the wreckage from the ocean’s floor, in what is now being called a navy operation. Four Brazilian Navy ships carrying recovery equipment and divers will reach the site today. The ships are traversing rough waters to reach the site.

A U.S. navy surveillance plane is also aiding in the search.

CBC reports the accident agency will submit a report by month’s end, according to Alain Bouillard, who is leading the exploration. The report will be submitted regardless of whether the black boxes are found.

Experts explore possibilities

According to several experts it is highly unlikely the recorders were destroyed, as they are designed to survive high impact and intense underwater pressure and conditions.

Arslanian said the end result of the investigation could however prove to be disappointing. “I cannot rule out the possibility that we might end up with a finding that is relatively unsatisfactory in terms of certainty,” he said.

Understanding exactly what caused the plane to crash will be very difficult without the recorders, which, if found, will hopefully provide some clues as to what happened on board. Without the recorders however it is possible the cause of the crash may never be revealed.

Arslanian also told reporters that a team is currently studying the Airbus’s maintenance records and there are so far no indications that anything was wrong with the jet before it took off.

Investigators are still speculating about the conditions under which the plane plunged into the Atlantic. They have not yet decided whether the plane hit the water intact or broke up in air before impact.

Air France Flight 447 disappeared Monday while on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris after sending out a series of automated messages indicating electrical failures. No manual distress signals were sent by the pilot.

On Tuesday it was confirmed the plane crashed in the ocean after investigators spotted a trail of plane debris in the water 400 miles off the coast of the Brazil’s Fernando de Noronha islands. The debris was later confirmed to have belonged to the missing plane.

It is believed that all 228 people on board Flight 447 died in the crash. A memorial service took place Wednesday at Paris’s Notre Dame Cathedral. French President Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni were in attendance.

Click here to read yesterday’s developments.

Updates:

Brazilian Air Force spokesman Col. Jorge Amaral says search planes have located more debris, including an approximately 23-foot long piece of the plane, BBC reports.

The site, about 56 miles south of the other field of wreckage, contains 10 metal objects scattered in a three mile radius and an oil slick that has spread about 12 miles, Amaral said.

Soon after that announcement, French officials provided their first update at a press conference that took place at an airport north of Paris. Arslanian said signals from the black boxes have not yet been picked up.

In order to find the capture the low frequency signals he says the team will have to narrow their search to a very limited range. Officials are still not hopeful the recorders will ever be found.

BBC reports Brazil has taken charge of the search for the wreckage, while France will focus on the crash investigation. French and Brazilian ships, struggling to navigate through high seas, have not yet arrived at the site.

Air France has said it received a bomb threat directed towards a flight from Buenos Aires, Argentina to Paris on May 27, just a few days before Flight 447 went missing, The Economic Times reports. There seems to be no connection between the threat (which was rendered fake after teams searched the plane) and Flight 447′s disappearance.

Experts still speculate that several factors contributed to the plane’s crash, since being struck by lightning alone would not have been enough to bring down the Airbus. Hail, cyclonic weather patterns and severe winds could have all potentially played a part in the disaster.

Some are also wondering whether the chief pilot was flying the plane when the problems arose, since pilots on long-distance flights take turns in order to stay alert and focused.

Memorial service begins

Back in Paris, hundreds of mourners gathered at Notre Dame Cathedral for today’s private memorial service. The cathedral’s bell tolled 228 times, once for each victim of the tragic Flight 447 crash.

The CBC reports French President Nicolas Sarkozy spoke with the victims’ family members in private at the ceremony. Sarkozy reportedly said arrangements will be made for the families to fly over the debris and suspected crash site if it is something they feel necessary during the grieving process.

The Pope sent a message of condolence to the mourners. It was played at the memorial service.

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