System Components

The system consists of mainly segments: Radio Beacons, Space Segment and Ground Segment

Radio Beacons: Cospas-Sarsat beacons are a powerful means of signaling to search and rescue forces that someone is in distress and needs assistance immediately. These emergency beacons are to be used as a last resort when all other means of emergency communications are unsuccessful. There are three types of beacon viz. ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) for aviation use, EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) for maritime use, PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) for general outdoor use by an individual.

Space Segment: The Cospas-Sarsat satellite system is actually a number of different but complementary satellite constellations in orbit around the earth. These include both low earth orbiting and Geostationary satellites. Due to completeness of the the coverage, distress signals can be picked up by the system from just about anywhere on the planet earth. There are Russian (COSPAS) and American (SARSAT) satellites in low earth orbit, and Indian (INSAT-3A), European (MSG-I) and American (GOES-E & W) satellites in geostationary orbit.

Ground Segment: Once a satellite picks up a distress signal, it sends it back to earth where it is tracked, identifies, located and decoded for registration information. RCC personnel use the information to verify that the distress is real and then send out SAR units to conduct the rescue. False alerts tie up the SAR resources as they are costly to pursue and put search and rescue crews at possible risk in adverse environments. The ground system consists of LUT (Local User Terminal), MCC (Mission Control Centre), RCC (Rescue Coordination Centre) and SAR (Search and Rescue) units.

Participants:

Space Segment:

Ground Segment:

Radio Beacons:

International Regulatory Authorities: ICAO, IMO
Lives Saved (globally): Saving of 17,117 lives in 4851 incidents (1982 to 2003)