COSPAS-SARSAT ENHANCEMENTS

GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITES

As you can see from the image above taken today from GOES-8, geostationary satellites are capable of continually viewing large areas of the Earth. These geostationary (GEO) satellites are also able to provide immediate alerting and identification of 406 MHz beacons.  Due to the GEO satellites having no relative motion from the perspective of the emergency beacon, they are not able to use Doppler location processing. Therefore, they are not able to determine a location for a beacon directly. They can, however, transmit your location with the distress signal if the beacon is encoded with integrated GPS, or has an external GPS feed.

Even without GPS, GEO satellites provide for immediate alerts. This is a valuable tool for SAR personnel since it allows them to begin their initial verification of the alert using the NOAA beacon registration database. Often this detective work yields a general location of the vessel, aircraft or person in distress, and SAR assets can be readied or dispatched to that general area. Ideally, a SARSAT or COSPAS polar orbiting (LEO) satellite will fly over the beacon within the next hour and calculate a Doppler location which will be forwarded to the SAR personnel who may already be enroute.

 Since every few minutes saved in reaching the scene of a distress amounts to an increased chance of survival, the early warning capability of GEOSAR provides a valuable tool to increase the effectiveness of the Cospas-Sarsat system and, ultimately, save more lives. One important warning though. It only works if the beacon is registered with NOAA. If you have a 406 MHz beacon and have not registered it, please do so by clicking here to get an EPIRB Form or an ELT Form.

GPS Beacons

As mentioned above, the next logical step in utilizing the immediate alert capabilities of GEOSAR was to give satellites some way of determining not just the identification, but also location, of a distress beacon. This provides immediate alerting and locating, something Cospas-Sarsat was striving for since its inception.

 Here's how it works: specially made emergency beacons determine their location using GPS that is either integrated into the beacon (called a location protocol beacon) or fed by an external GPS receiver. This location is then encoded into the 406 MHz signal transmitted by the beacon. When this signal is received by the USMCC, it is treated much the same way as one received from the SARSAT and COSPAS LEO satellites. The USMCC determines which RCC should respond and immediately transmits a message to that RCC. This means that as long as the EPIRB is within view of a satellite (basically anywhere from 70 degrees North to 70 degrees South latitudes), a distress message will reach rescue personnel immediately.  Since they will know exactly where you are and who you are, the response is extremely quick!