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USER’S HANDBOOK
Page 11
Oct 11/07
1. INTRODUCTION TO THE COSPAS-SARSAT SYSTEM
A. The COSPAS-SARSAT* system
The purpose of the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system is to detect and locate all distress signals transmitted
by aeronautical, maritime or land-based beacons, for the search and rescue organizations.
This program is the result of an international collaboration between the United States, Canada and France
on the one hand (SARSAT project), and Russia on the other hand (COSPAS project). These two projects
are fully compatible.
Since the first results were obtained several countries have joined the program. Several other countries
have shown an interest and will soon be joining the COSPAS-SARSAT system partners.
ELTA in relation with CNES (French National Space Agency) has developed the complete range of products
required for COSPAS-SARSAT system operation.
Following an in-depth study phase, ELTA has arrived at highly conclusive technical results, and experimental
and operational use of the "ground" equipment have proven this equipment's reliability and ease-of-use.
B. System organization (Ref. Fig. 1)
In the COSPAS-SARSAT system, space equipment is placed on board several satellites in low near-polar
orbit to capture transmissions from emergency transmitters and to retransmit these signals to specialized
ground stations called Local User Terminals (LUT). These ground stations determine the position of the
emergency transmitters and then retransmit the position data to the designated Mission Control Centers
(MCC). The MCCs in turn retransmit these data to the appropriate Rescue Coordination Centers (RCC) so
that they can start the search and rescue operations.
* COSPAS-SARSAT :
COSPAS = Kosmicheskaya Sistyema Poiska Avariynych Sudov
SARSAT = Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking