And this talk and the
flowing talk is connected.
I will talking
about the location,
data collecting system
of Nimbus-3, 4 and 6
and which were really
scientific experiments,
they were
designed for it,
tracking new logical
balloons and buoys
and so forth, free drifting.
But there was a
spinner called
search and rescue that
came out of this
and we began
to look at it,
so my talk will be linked
to Tim Sinquefield
who is sitting here
from NOAA Corp
and he will follow-up with
what I say on the
operational part of
search and rescue and
how it has evolved
and other operating program.
So as I said Nimbus-3 and
4 have a system called the IRLS,
the system Interrogation
Recording and Location
and Nimbus-6 has a
scientific experiment
Paul Julian was the PI
and Verner Soumi was
a Co-lead on it.
I was the Co-lead also,
and I will be talking
about some of our
search and rescue
demonstrations here.
So here is the IRL
System on Nimbus
and you have to remember
this was way before GPS,
you have [inaudible] it's
more complicated
and sophisticated than
what we have here,
but this was very early on
and as you can see we had
surface platforms
around the IRL.
The satellite
was programmed,
each IRL with commands for
each of these platforms
and the satellite would
send the command
and the system will respond
and we will give it
a range, distance
and we will send a frame of
data with sensor data
or as I will talk
later about some
search and rescue messages.
So this was the IRL System
I had worked, again,
you have to remember that
this was not in real-time,
this was some sequence orbits
where every 12 hours or so
we could give a pass-over
to some of these things,
but it did serve to
demonstrate the concept.
Here is some of the early
drifting buoy data
that we always thought
was interesting,
In the Arctic we did two
buoys were deployed here
and they meandered
all over the place
and they all ended up
right in that
little field
we were very intrigued
when that happened,
it must have been a down
downwelling or something,
that drove in there.
Here is one of our first
rescues you might say,
there was a buoy
deployed off Puerto Rico
it was operated by the
National Oceanographic office.
It was a very sophisticated
large buoy system,
I don't know
what it was worth,
but it was considered very
important for their work
and it broke its
mooring and here we
and of course Nimbus
was now tracking it
and with this last
location here
we were able to
steer a ship to it
and they were totally
elated with this.
It was the first time
we rescued something,
we had drifting buoy, but
it saved them a ton of money.
I don't remember what the impact
would have been otherwise,
but it would have
been tremendous
to recover that thing,
they would have been searching
all over the ocean for it.
We did a balloon
experiment on Nimbus-3
and this was - believe it
or not that's the gondola
that flew on a balloon
that little thing there 
is our antenna
and our boxes inside here,
we are not that's
not our thing,
and this was under
the control of NCAR
and it was just to
show that we could
- we could track a balloon
because actually that's
what we are setting out
to do eventually.
And here is the balloon package
that we developed for Nimbus-4,
this box is about 12
inches x 6 inches
and they flew quite
high over solar panel,
and we actually launched
from Ascension Island;
30 of these went into the
tropics and were tracked,
and here we actually copy
pictorially launched itself,
you see the balloon and
that package underneath,
and this current would
travel along the runway
at Ascension Island at the
same velocity as the wind
and when they may
then you can let the
balloon raise up vertically
and it was actually
another pilot baloon here,
let me - it's hard see that
here was the indication
that we are at
the right velocity
and here is some examples,
balloons went to [inaudible]
and here are some cracking
data from one of those balloons
and you can see that they really
traveled around the equator
and they never
came to leave,
however we did have a
cut down mechanism
on the balloon occasionally
drifting over into China
or some other country.
We actually had
to cut down that,
someone left that
little path there.
And eventually we
got to the animals,
that's a 25 pound package
and learn... to
stable the art
and we actually named
that Ilk Mo for [inaudible]
And here is Sheila Scott,
Sheila is a British Pilot,
she was a Dame, I think
that's equivalent
to a Knight in Britain
and when her organization
approached us
it was as if the British
Government was asking us
so naturally we
agreed to track her
and her - she had a
little Piper Aztec.
Her goal was to fly
solo around the world
and she was not the
first to try that,
but I've heard her flight was
a flight over the North Pole.
So she was the first
female solo pilot
over the pole in
a little plane.
So here is the plane,
that's our intent,
it had to be
certified by the FAA
and here is Sheila's
flight over the pole.
At this point I want
to mention that
this is just a part of her
around the world trip.
She went to countries
all over the world
and every time she landed
there seem to be a crisis.
Her battery was bad, or
the plane was...
the engine was overheating,
it was only the crisis,
and actually you know,
the reporters were there
and she was in the
newspapers and so forth.
And we started to worry
about this leg of the mission,
because this was going to
be kind of hazardous flying
from here all over there
with no nothing in here,
and by the time we got to
I think that's Norway...
by the time we got there,
we didn't have
much choice.
We had an astronaut,
were those
giving her instructions
by the way
and then she took-off
and my gosh, she went
right over that pole,
fastest as clear we could see
it was right over the top of
- then flew over to
Alaska to Barter Island
and the radar picked her up
and then she continued on.
And when she
finally landed,
somebody told me they
heard a sigh of relief
from NASA Headquarters
up in Greenbelt.
And she wrote a book.
It was an interesting
book she published
with her whole story of this.
So Sheila didn't
need to be rescued
but she did have a code
that she would have sent,
that told us that
she needed help.
Moving on to Nimbus-6,
now this is the
TWERLE experiment,
I mentioned Paul Julian
and Verner Soumi
were the Co-leads earlier
principals on here.
In this... I keep hitting
that down button.
This didn't have the
command linked down
that I showed talking
about on the IRLS.
These platforms balloons
and buoys had timers
that transmitted 1
pulse per second,
one second per 60
seconds rather,
and they were random,
totally random incoherent
and that time shift
and the Doppler
shift combined would
enable us to have as many
as 200 in-field view
and the mutual
interference even though
they were transmitting
randomly,
were so, so low that it
was that negligible.
And so the equipment that
was on the platforms
was obviously
smaller and lighter
and lower in power and
Doppler was used here.
And again, main purpose of this
was the balloon and the buoys.
Here is an example, here is a
picture of our balloon package
that we developed
for that system,
that antenna is a piece of
nylon that's about 2-feet tall
and this balloon
had we designed
so it was non-hazardous to
an aircraft, an airliner,
a passenger airliner
and we actually did
extensive testing of
this to make sure that
if an airline hit this
anywhere along that path,
the string, it wouldn't just
the package that we lined up
there would be no problem.
Fortunately, we never heard of
any attempt to do that
and I am glad it
wasn't the airplane
that tried it but here
is some balloon data
from that experiment.
Again, this was Paul
Julian and Verner Soumi
had this experiment done
here in the bottom
and Paul was interested
in this tracking data
and my role was to deliver
the spacecraft processor.
I wanted to give some
credit to Morg Friedman here
who gave us the idea
for the processor
we used to process that data.
So here is a buoy,
electronic view,
and that's about
12-14 inches
and here is an example
of a free-drifting
buoy we had -
I don't remember
how many we had,
but there are a lot of them
and you can see the droves
would be dropped down
and that would capture
the sub-surface current
and that's helped the
buoy would be propelled
and we will track with
free drifting buoy.
And here is an example
what the buoy look like.
Ron Ronning mentioned the
double Eagle in his talk.
This is a... this
was our real rescue;
this is our first
real rescue.
Three fellows were going
to attempt to cross the
Atlantic in a balloon, a
hired balloon from
here Cape Cod,
all the way
over to Paris.
They should have... the flight
should have taken like that.
And they got caught in
this circulation here
and they had to be rescued.
They sent the code, we
have a code in the package
and they sent it
and we detected it
and that's the
coast guard wrestle
and you see a
little black circle
shows our antenna,
that little gondola,
that's the gondola
suspended below the balloon
and it floated
fortunately.
So there were three
men in there
that were rescued
because of that date
So that was kind of
setting the stage
for the technology that
was involving there.
This was the same
experiment I talked about,
in fact, we had to
rescue them there,
but they didn't give up.
They came back and
they tried it again
and here they finally got
correctly landed in Paris.
And in the back
there is a poster
where there are
pictures in it.
We had a press conference
after we came -
they came back
off the Goddard.
Here is another interesting
experiment we did
or headed towards
search and rescue.
His real name
was Naomi Uemura,
a Japanese explorer,
and he was going to...
what he did, he took a
dogsled and keep moving.
He took a dogsled
over Greenland,
all the way across from
North to South, as a solo.
And he was collecting
scientific data along the way
and there is our
antenna and it was...
I don't know the
exact duration
but he had to be
regularly supplied with
food and other things.
And the way that worked
is, he had a pilot,
a Canadian pilot would
take our position we had
and start flying
towards that position,
and eventually
he'd be coming -
he'd come in the radio
contact with Naomi,
and what would happen is,
Naomi would
watch the dogs.
The dogs would hear the
aircraft before he did.
So he would tell the pilot
where the dogs were looking
and then the pilot
would use that heading
and our location to zoom in on
and they came right in.
So he had the satellite
and the human and the dogs,
all working together.
And it worked very well.
Well, he didn't
have to be rescued.
He never uses the code.
This is the list of
experiments we had on that
-- there were 49 of them.
These were some prominent
scientists in here
and at the end of the Nimbus
7 TWERLE experiment
this list was send
over to Noah.
Noah was getting ready to
launch the Argos System
which is an
operational version
of what we just talked about.
And that led them
into the operational field,
so most of those users
that we indoctrinated
showed how to repeat
the data, joined Argos,
and that of course is still
running today as far as I know.
And in 04 when I last filled
this data they had 400 programs
and a lot of
platforms on the earth,
they were charging
for that operation,
what was... it
was nonprofit.
It wasn't profitable.
And eventually they
began experiment
with use of GPS when
they finally came along.
So it was a very
successful program
and it laid exactly the
basis for the TWERLE.
So here is the evolution
of some of that technology,
you know that
25 pound package,
well, now they got smaller.
And here is a
polar bear there,
these are from Argos, and
they even got the birds
and they still do bird.
Here is the evolution;
here is a concept of SARSAT.
I have to give Bill Radish
some credit here for this,
because this, this was not
an easy program to sell.
You might think
certain rescue;
it's so noble and so beneficial
that you could easily sell.
But we had a heck of time.
You wouldn't even believe
the things we were told
and I will
mention it later.
This is the COSPAS-SARSAT.
COSPAS is a Russian
and this program
eventually had the US,
France, Canada and Russia,
four countries.
And Bill gets credit for
working that whole community,
including NASA
Headquarters by the way,
and I want to pull
this together.
It was not easy to
sell as I mentioned,
Bill and Bernie
Trudel and myself,
Bernie and I worked
for Bill at that time.
And we went to
Headquarters after a year
or so developing this
plan and we presented it,
and we were
told to go home.
But NASA was not going
to be buying a system
to save people that can afford
to buy their own airplane.
That's what we were told.
Now we were devastated.
We were - ah!
And then all of a sudden Senator
Hale Boggs from Mississippi,
a real close powerful
guy was lost in Alaska,
he didn't have
any transmitter,
and all of a sudden we got call
back from the Headquarters,
and from that on
we had a program.
In 1985, and again I
mentioned these countries.
Today, well, when I showed
this chart 10 years ago
at the foyer we had...
there were 38 countries
in the program,
probably more than now.
This is the number they
gave me at that time.
And I think what's
happening now is you heard
from Tim that GPS,
Geostationary Satellites
are now taken over.
We have the polar robot
with the time delay
in-between the
passes, 12 hours.
And this of course,
gives you real-time.
So in order to help
promote that system
we made these
bumper stickers,
and encourage people to
help for our program.