by NOAA
Reprinted with permission of FAA Aviation News
Thanks to the international humanitarian program known as Cospas-Sarsat, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in October 2002, more than 14,000 lives have been saved worldwide, including about 5,000 in the United States, since the program began in 1982. Cospas-Sarsat is a search and rescue system that uses U.S. and Russian satellites to detect and locate emergency beacons carried by aircraft, ships, or individuals in distress. Last year, 166 lives were saved: 112 on the seas, 39 in the Alaskan wilderness, and 15 on downed aircraft in the states around the country.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) operates a series of polar-orbiting and geostationary environmental satellites that detect and locate aviators, mariners, and land-based users in distress. These satellites, along with a network of ground stations and the U.S. Mission Control Center in Suitland, MD, are part of the International Cospas-Sarsat program, whose mission is to relay distress signals to the international search and rescue community.
Sponsored by Canada, France, Russia, and the United States, and started during the Cold War, the system operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and aims to reduce the time required to alert rescue authorities whenever a distress situation occurs. In the United States, the Cospas-Sarsat program is operated and funded by NOAA, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
“We are an international humanitarian program whose goals and rewards are the same?saving lives,” say Ajay Mehta, manager of NOAA’s Sarsat program. “We had an unusual rescue last year with a bear circling a private plane that had crashed in Alaska with two people on board,” said Mehta. “These folks were in a dangerous predicament. Yet, because there was an emergency locator transmitter on board the aircraft that activated upon impact, rescue authorities were able to respond to the distress quickly. On arrival, the search and rescue aircraft saw the situation unfolding and dispatched a helicopter to retrieve the occupants and bring them to safety.”