A crowd-sourcing effort to locate the missing Malaysia Airlines aircraft using satellite imagery overloaded the computer network with an "unprecedented" amount of traffic, the technology company says.
The satellite firm DigitalGlobe has posted a message on its website, saying the system was down.
"We are working to best handle an unprecedented level of web traffic and interest in supporting the search," the company said.
"Please check back soon. We have new imagery collections planned for today and hope to make those images available online for the crowd as soon as possible."
DigitalGlobal activated its crowd-sourcing platform on Monday in an effort to locate the Boeing 777 that mysteriously disappeared on Saturday en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard.
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The company invited volunteers to comb through images from its Tomnod platform of satellite images for clues that may help locate the aircraft.
DigitalGlobe says it operates "the world's most advanced constellation of commercial imaging satellites" and that after the plane went missing, it activated its emergency system.
On Sunday, two of the company's satellites collected imagery of the area where evidence suggested the aircraft may have crashed into the water - where the Gulf of Thailand meets the South China Sea.
The DigitalGlobe website posted comments from people offering to help and those frustrated when the system went down.
Several comments said simply "count me in", while one visitor wrote: "I am a former navy patrol plane commander. I believe I can tell aircraft debris when I see it."
The Colorado-based company says about 600,000 people have scanned its satellite images.
DigitalGlobe said on Tuesday it planned daily updates of the images on the search website, http://www.tomnod.com.
Users can tag images on the website if they see wreckage, life rafts, oil slicks or other evidence.
Shay Har-Noy, DigitalGlobe's senior director for geospatial big data, said US government agencies have access to its images as well.
