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COSPAS

Established in principle by the USSR, US, Canada, and France in 1979, COSPAS-SARSAT is designed to relay distress signals from the site of aircraft and ship accidents or other emergency situations to special Local User Terminals (LUTs) which in turn notify the appropriate search and rescue teams. Distress signals are transmitted on either 121.5MHz (15 km location accuracy) or 406 MHz (2 km location accuracy) and rebroadcast on 1544.5 MHz to LUTs. Over 600,000 beacons are deployed worldwide, saving more than 4,500 lives since the system began operations via Kosmos 1383 in September, 1982. The number of deployed beacons could double by the end of 1995 (References 444-445).

The Ukrainian Musson Corporation of Sevastopol has been-the primary supplier of COSPAS distress beacons for the Russian Federation. The ARB (Emergency Locator Beacon)- 121 system employs the 2.2 kg Poisk-R emergency locator beacon and the 1.8 kg Poisk-R emergency distress signal transmitters for the COSPAS lower band, while the more popular 4.5 kg ARB-406 emits the higher frequency distress signal every 50 seconds for up to 48 hours with a power of 5 W (Reference 131). Veteran cosmonaut G. S. Titov is now President of a new Russian firm called Kosmoflot which will also manufacture navigational equipment and COSPAS beacons. The primary Russian LUTs are located at Arkhangelsk, Moscow, Novosibirsk, and Vladivostok. The Russian Federation has also proposed the creation of a rocket-borne rescue system called VITA which would employ converted SS-18 or SS-19 ICBM's to send rescue equipment to the site of an accident identified by the COSPAS-SARSAT system (Section 2.9).

131. Inmarsat Affiliate to Operate Medium-Altitude Satellite System", Aviation Week and Space Technology, 23 May 1994, p. 58.

444. C. Lardier, "Bilan Du Systeme COSPAS-SARSAT", Air & Cosmos, 30 June 1995. p. 41.

445. "Rescue System's Operator Predicts Rapid Expansion", Space News, 20-26 September 1993, p.13.

Sources and Resources

• Adapted from: Europe and Asia in Space 1993-1994, Nicholas Johnson and David Rodvold [Kaman Sciences / Air Force Phillips Laboratory]

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