Good afternoon!
At NOAA SARSAT
we were responsible basically
for monitoring emergency alerts
and then setting those alerts
directly through
our ground systems
and our communication systems
to search and
rescue authorities.
And in the US that would be the
Coast Guard or the Air Force
because they're the ones
that are mandated to do SAR
in the United States.
Now what do I mean
by distress alerts?
Basically if you are in
trouble anywhere in the world
and you have a
specific device
that I am going to talk
about here in a minute,
you can activate that device
and our satellites will
locate your position
and then send that to
search and rescue forces
and they will be
able to find you.
So these are the devices
I was talking about
the Emergency Beacons,
and some already existed
before this program.
These are Emergency
Locator Transmitters
and they were located...
they were used on aircraft,
even before this system.
And the limiting
factor there was
another airplane
had to be up
and monitor the frequency that
these ELTs were giving off,
so it was a much
smaller search area
than you have now
with the satellites,
because basically
with the satellites
you can search
the entire earth,
and with the aircraft you can
only search specific areas
and you had to
worry about weather
and you had to
worry about fuel
and you had to worry
about your budget
for the various search
and rescue agencies.
But now, being a worldwide
program monitored by satellite,
it's a... offered a lot
of help and assistance
to people over the years,
and the different types
of beacons have drone
and start to
used aircraft now.
They have beacons for ships.
These are called EPIRBs
(Emergency Position
Indicating Radio Beacons).
If you have ever watched
the Deadliest Catch
you hear some beeping going
off on the radio or something,
they're talking about
these, these EPIRBs.
And now, even individuals
like if you are a hiker
going off in the Grand Canyon
or if you are a skier out in
the rocky mountains or a kayaker
down in the Florida
Keys or something,
you can wear one of
these on your person
so if you get in trouble
that you can activate it
and somebody will comply to.
This has become a
cottage industry
and companies are
already involved
with the search
and rescue equipment
like rescue lights and PFDs
life jackets that sort of thing,
and started
manufacturing these,
and there is about
a million and a half
worldwide in the
population right now.
So some other advancements
that have happened since
the experiments with Nimbus.
We started using
geostationary satellites
as well as the
polar-orbiting,
and this gave some, some better
capabilities for one,
we've got a much larger
search area at any given time.
With the orbiting satellites,
there was a 2500,
well... yeah, 2500-mile
diameter footprint.
So if you were in trouble
and you turned
on your device
right after the
satellite passed you,
then you might be waiting
there for a while
until that next
satellite passed over.
So it maybe 20 or 40 minutes
after you press
that button before
we have received that
signal to the satellite.
Whereas, geostationary
has a footprint
that is basically almost
entire size of the hemisphere,
so you know if you are anywhere
in North or South America,
pretty much as long as you
are not near the poles,
that geostationary satellite
can see almost instantly
when you light
off your beacon.
Another advancement was a few
years back, in 80s we had GPS,
late 80s early 90s
we are able to get the GPS
signal put on our beacons.
So when you turn on the beacon
there is a GPS chip in there,
they can initialize
with the GPS satellite
and then send
that GPS position
straight to the
geostationary satellite
or the polar-orbiting
satellite,
and we would be able to
have the type of position,
information we got previously
with the Nimbus-derived
location protocols
and also with
the GPS protocol,
so the Coast Guard gets
both of those types
of information still.
On the program's side
SARAT has grown a lot.
It started as an
international program
and it's still international,
there is a lot of
international collaboration,
international organizations
involved with the UN,
make recommendations
for carriage
so for instance the
International Maritime
Organization
will mandate carriage
for commercial ships
for the... so they're
involved with my EPIRBs
and the International Civil
Aviation Organization or ICAO
will be involved with
mandating the use of Emergency
Locator Transmitters
and then you have the
International Telecommunications
Union (ITU)
which basically tells,
you know, the world to stay away
from that 406 MHz frequencies
which is what
our beacons use
and it protects that frequency
from radio stations
and communications companies
from using that frequency
so it's dedicated for
research and rescue
throughout the world.
And likewise talking about...
we talked earlier about
how this was developed
with the United States, Canada
and France and Russia
at the time
and if you remember
back in the 70s,
we weren't too friendly
with Russia on those things
but we were able to
find agreement here;
now that there are
over 43 countries
that participate directly
with this program
and they actually have,
you know, input
into how the program is run
but there's even more
countries involved
with the search
and rescue aspect.
So all these
countries in green
are actually
receiving the alerts
but they may push
that information out
to those countries
around them
to their various search
and rescue organizations.
So you know, basically this
entire map should be green
with some exceptions
possibly North Korea and Iran
or something might
not be onboard
but pretty much the entire world
is tied in to this system now
for search and rescue.
Then on a national level,
you know several agencies,
government's use,
NOAA has oversight now,
NASA developed it,
but since they were
weather satellites
under the auspice of NOAA
that source that
program came under us,
so we coordinate with again
the Air Force or inland SAR,
the Coast Guard for Maritime
and we still work with NASA,
there is a group over here
that does research
and development for SARSAT
and we coordinate
on a daily basis
well, at least a quarterly
basis with meeting
and such with them here,
and I think Lisa was Dr. Lisa
Mazzuca hits that,
she is with NASA
and then on the flip-side
SARSAT is directly
involved with the National
Search and Rescue Committee
and we are involved with
National Search and Rescue Plan
so we advise them with
SARSAT developments.
SARSAT has been
seamlessly integrated
and to the Search
and Rescue Community
within the United States.
You can see here that Air
Force and the Coast Guard
have lines drawn for
their responsibilities,
here are the various Coast
Guard districts here
and what happens is
when we get an alert
it goes through our servers
electronically so
we don't even see it,
and then it goes
to the Air Force
and Coast Guard Search
and Rescue programs;
so here you see a
screen-shot of the
Coast Guard's Search
and Rescue Program
that they use and
these are actual alerts
that are from
our satellites
that just pop-up
on their screen
and they can gather
all the information
right on the
finger tips.
As we saw earlier
you can basically
be in the most remote
parts of the world
and the satellites
can locate you
and here is an example.
This young lady named
Abby Sunderland
wanted to be the
youngest person;
she is the youngest person
or youngest female,
I am not sure which
to circumnavigate
the globe alone.
So she set out and she
made it all the way
to the South Indian Ocean
and then she got involved
in this huge storm,
with 30 and
40 foot seas.
Her boat rolled over
several times,
went underwater several times,
popped back up, her
masts broken half
and she lost most of
her communications.
She had a satphone
but for some reason
wasn't able to use it,
to call out, but she
did have the EPIRB,
and it did what it
was supposed to do
and they were
able to find her.
So we were talking
about remoteness,
the closest land
she was near,
you know what, it's about
as far away from land
as you can possibly get.
So she had a better
chance to going down
to Antarctica than going
over there to Australia.
Anyways she was so grateful,
she came by to visit us at
our office in Suitland
and to learn more
about the system,
so here is our
building here.
This is the back
of our building
but if you went over
to the front
you would see three
smaller dishes
and those are
SARSAT dishes
that we use right
above our building.
So that was just
one example.
Since these numbers
are from 1982
when we formally took
over the program but...
in the United States
there has been
over 7400 saves,
at worldwide there
have been over 37,000
so generally once a
year around 250 saves
occurred because of SARSAT,
and we count those if
SARSAT was the only
or the primary use of
finding that location.
So someone calls
Coast Guard on radio,
and then their boat sinks but
their Coast Guard respond
because of the
radio contact,
then we won't count it.
But if the Coast
Guard responds
only because of the
location information
from the EPIRB or ELT or PLB
then we count
it as the same.
So in the U.S.
about 250 a year are saved
and then worldwide about
2000 a year are saved,
and that number
keeps going up
with the amount of beacons
that are bought per year.
So it's getting
even more-and-more
as the beacon
population increases.
NOAA is reaching...
well our NOAA weather satellites
are reaching the end
of their service life,
and so for the past
30 somewhat years,
we have been using basically
the same technologies
that were available from
the Nimbus program,
so it's been a very long
and productive use
of that technology
and the next set of satellites
that are going to go up
where we can put
SARSAT equipment on
our GPS satellites.
And since this is an
international program
we have other
international partners,
so Europe's Galileo satellites
are similar to our GPS,
their global navigation system
will have this on it as well,
and the Russian Glonass
system will also have it,
and that's Russia's version
of GPS positioning system.
What this will give SARSAT is
better location availability,
when these
satellites are up,
there will be about 72
satellites in the constellation.
And with that number
of satellites,
anywhere on earth
should be in view of four
satellites at any given time.
So basically the entire
earth will have 100% coverage,
100% of the time
with the MEOSAR system.
So as soon as someone
turns on their beacon now
then almost instantly
we will know
within a couple of
meters where someone is,
versus a couple
of hundred yards
or couple of
several kilometers.
So we have gone from
several kilometers,
to several hundred yards to
2 or 3 meters of accuracy
and the timing keeps
getting better too.
Also, another advantage
is the size of the
15:07 circle for
like a better
word to call it.
If you see the
polar-orbiting satellites
are set 2500
mile diameter.
Here you have almost as
large of a diameter
as the geostationary
satellites,
and then imagine 72 of those
overlapping each other.
So much more capability.
So we've had a 30-year
run of using the...
Nimbus technology and now
reaching the end of that
and going ahead
for 30 more years.
And that's all thanks to NASA
and their development team
and we certainly are
better off for having it.
Thank you!
[Applause]