Satellite system helps rescue ships at sea
Photo by klareralt
Imagine that you’re on a ship at sea. You’ve hit some bad weather and you’re in danger. You activate your emergency beacon, which sends out a distress signal.
That signal is relayed to satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. It’s relayed back down to NOAA’s control center, where it’s passed on to the Coast Guard. If all goes as planned, you could be rescued within two or three hours. This is the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking, or SARSAT, system. It’s saved over five thousand American lives since coming into existence as a cooperative effort between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Technology has evolved since then, and SARSAT is looking to make some major improvements to the system, says Ajay Mehta, SARSAT’s program manager.
Ajay Mehta: It can take up to 90 minutes for a satellite to come overhead, to get a position. And that’s unacceptable, but that’s the reality of the system. We are now looking at putting the search and rescue instruments on new satellites, the ones that the Air Force operates, the GPS satellites. There are many more of them, so they are always overhead. What it would do is take out this wait time to get a position. You’d have basically instantaneous detection of a distress beacon and then the location would be provided immediately.
Our thanks today to Ajay Mehta of SARSAT.
Additional Teacher Resources
NOAA: Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking
This is the home page for the NOAA Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking program. It includes a graphic overview of how the system works.
NOAA: Search and Rescue Satellite Saves Fishermen Lives
This article outlines how the NOAA Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking program saved the lives of five crew-members from a fishing boat after their vessel sank 60 miles east of Cape Cod, MA.
