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1. SEARCH & RESCUE (SAR) |
Accidents in sea, air and even on land are part of our present day life. From the early days of history, with the man's unquenchable pursuit for adventure, there have been tragic incidents, involving loss of lives and property. With the increasing commercial interests in travel, the essentiality of safety has been well recognized and this has led to a number of innovations in the design of aircrafts and ships. Nevertheless, there is no way to completely eliminate accidents and hence, need for a foolproof search and rescue system.
In any emergency, time is precious; quicker the search areas are identified, more successful is the rescue. There are several ways that search and rescue authorities are alerted to a vessel or an aircraft in trouble, that includes marine radio distress calls, flares and overdue vessel or aircraft reports. But the space-age-technology elegantly handles the search and rescue operations using Satellites and Radio beacons. The radio beacon is a buoyant, self-contained radio transmitter and if activated, continuously emits a distinct
distress signal for a period, not less than 24 hours.
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SAVIOURS IN SPACE |
| 2. COSPAS-SARSAT SYSTEM |
The Cospas-Sarsat is an international satellite system for search and rescue, comprised of a constellation of satellites in polar and geostationary orbits and a network of ground stations. This system provides distress alert and location information to respective Search and Rescue (SAR) authorities globally for maritime, aviation and land users in distress.
The Cospas-Sarsat Programme, as of February 2009, was comprised of 4 Parties to the Cospas-Sarsat Agreement, 25 Ground Segment Providers, 9 User States and 2 Participating Organisations. From Sept. 1982 to Dec. 2007, the Cospas-Sarsat system has supported the rescue of almost 25,000 persons in about 6800 SAR events globally.
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| 3. SYSTEM COMPONENTS |
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The Cospas-Sarsat system consists of three main segments: Radio Beacons, Space Segment and Ground Segment.
a. Radio Beacons: A Cospas-Sarsat beacon operating on 406 MHz frequency is a powerful means of signaling to search and rescue forces that someone is in distress and is in need of immediate assistance. These emergency beacons are considered as the last resort for people in distress for saving their lives, when all other modes of emergency communications prove futile. There are three types of beacons viz. ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) for aviation use, EPIRB (Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon) for maritime use, and PLB (Personal Locator Beacon) for general outdoor use by an individual. The 406 MHz beacons are highly sophisticated because of the inclusion of digitally coded unique identification information in the beacon message, including location of the distress site based on GPS ( for new generation beacon models). The global 406 MHz distress beacon population as of December 2007 was estimated at 600,000.
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b. Space Segment: The Cospas-Sarsat satellite system consists of a number of different but complementary satellite constellations orbiting the earth. These include low earth orbiting (COSPAS and SARSAT) and geostationary satellites. Due to global coverage of the satellite system, distress signals can be picked up from anywhere on the earth. |
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Status of Space segment (as on February 2009) - LEOSAR: 5 SARSAT satellites (S7, S8, S9, S10, S11), GEOSAR: 5 Geostationary satellites [INSAT-3A (93.5o E), GOES-East (75o W), GOES-West (135o W), MSG1 (9.5o W), MSG2 (0o].
c. Ground Segment: The ground system, tracks, receives and processes distress signals from the Cospas-Sarsat beacons.
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