In 1982, the rescue of a pilot and two passengers after their plane crashed in British Columbia marked a major milestone in search and rescue. They became the first of over 18,000 people saved thanks to the COSPAS-SARSAT system, a satellite system used to locate emergency beacons anywhere in the world. The Communications Research Centre Canada (CRC) was one of the founding international partners to develop this important technology, starting in the mid 1970’s.

Today, CRC is working with its partners to continue to improve the system, making it possible to save even more lives. CRC is acting as the scientific authority for several projects funded by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) in this area, including a project with Canadian-based EMS SATCOM to develop the next generation ground station for the COSPAS-SARSAT system. These new ground stations will allow the system to access search and rescue payloads on future global navigation satellites, such as GPS, Glonass and Galileo.

Current satellite networks don’t provide full global coverage at all times, meaning that there is sometimes a delay of several hours before a satellite is in range to transmit an emergency signal. New innovations using medium earth orbit satellite networks will allow the transmission of the signal to be almost instantaneous. This will, in turn, allow emergency officials to quickly locate the site of the emergency call and save precious time in their rescue efforts.

Along with working on the development of these new technologies, CRC will be participating in international experiments to evaluate and demonstrate the proof of concept for this new satellite technology. CRC will also be setting up tracking antennas that will be connected to the EMS computer equipment to establish Canada's prototype ground station.

For more information about the COSPAS-SARSAT system, visit http://www.cospas-sarsat.org.