Orolia Maritime has revealed the FastFind ReturnLink PLB with Return Link System (RLS) life-saving beacon system.
Orolia worked closely with the European GNSS Agency (GSA) on the Galileo satellite system since the company was selected to lead development of next-generation search-and-rescue (SAR) distress beacons. Earlier this year, Orolia introduced the first Galileo-enabled personal locator beacons (PLBs).
Building upon this, the new FastFind ReturnLink transmits the user’s unique ID and GNSS location via the global network of Cospas-Sarsat search-and-rescue satellites, and then uses Galileo’s Return Link Service to transmit a return signal back to the user’s device to confirm the alert has been received and location has been detected.
The PLB displays a blue light to inform the user that search-and-rescue professionals are aware of their situation and location and that they are not alone.
“We are dedicated to producing SAR products that keep people safe on land and sea, and the FastFind ReturnLink PLB is Orolia Maritime’s most advanced search and rescue beacon to date,” said Chris Loizou, vice president of Maritime at Orolia. “The psychological impact of knowing that help is on the way cannot be underestimated, and this PLB will provide invaluable peace of mind for those in distress.”
The FastFind ReturnLink PLB uses the latest SAR technology, packed into a simple, rugged and lightweight palm-sized unit. Features include:
Multi-constellation GNSS — both Galileo and GPS receivers.
Belt-attachable buoyancy pouch and life-jacket oral tube clip attachments.
No subscription.
Five-year battery life.
Waterproof to 10 meters.
SOS Morse LED flashing light and RLS Reassurance blue flashing light.
Safe-stow antenna and three-stage activation.
Galileo’s RLS is expected to be fully operational in January 2020.
Operation Shark Bait showed how this vital service can quickly trigger a rescue operation and save lives at sea. Despite a grey day and choppy sea conditions, an emergency rescue was initiated in just over three and a half minutes after intrepid “volunteer victim,” Australian broadcaster and explorer Tara Foster, operated her Galileo-enabled SAR beacon from a small life raft buffeted by the waves just offshore from the port of Ostend.
Operation Shark Bait was a specially designed demonstration of the capabilities of the Galileo SAR service that took place around the new state-of-the-art Belgian Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Ostend with an invited audience of VIPs and media. The whole operation was streamed live over YouTube and the Europe By Satellite (EBS) TV service.
The Shark Bait test took just over three and a half minutes to locate the PLB developed under a GSA Horizon 2020 project. (Photo: GSA)
The scenario was simple. Tara was left alone at sea in a small life raft, but with a 406-MHz Cospas-Sarsat personal locator beacon (PLB). On activating the beacon, the stopwatch started. The time to receive the distress signal, compute her position and alert the relevant rescue authorities was recorded. The Belgian fast rescue boat ORKA R6 then dashed out to sea to pick her up.
Subsequently, a NH90 Cayman SAR helicopter from the Belgian 40th squadron was also scrambled to help transfer “injured” Tara to hospital.
Shark Bait was a great success with just 3 minutes 32 seconds elapsing from Tara activating her Galileo-enabled personal locator beacon (PLB) to the moment commanders at MRCC could dispatch the ORKA to her location.
The location, with an initial accuracy of 100 metres, is provided by the Galileo receiver inside the PLB to the Galileo satellites in view. The Galileo satellites then forward this information to the Cospas-Sarsat infrastructure, where the position is validated.
“The PLB used was developed under one of our Horizon 2020 projects and is the first Galileo-enabled beacon on the market,” said Fiammetta Diani, head of market development at the GSA.
Time saver, life saver
The day started at the MRCC in Ostend with a visit to the operations centre, an inspection of the ORKA Fast Rescue Boat and a chance to talk to Tara Foster before she was “castaway” on the waves.
Dries Boodts, deputy nautical director at MRCC, described the role of the center, which has a single focus on safety at sea. “The globe is divided into Search and Rescue Regions (SRRs),” Boodts said. “The MRCC oversees the Belgian maritime region that extends up to 47 miles off the Belgian coast.”
The region includes major shipping lanes and two large offshore wind energy parks. The MRCC deals with around 450 incidents each year involving a range of craft and issues from collisions at sea to war munitions recovery. It can call on an assortment of assets including its own rescue craft, police and navy vessels and the Belgian air force and the MRCC collaborates extensively with authorities in neighbouring countries.
Galileo is Europe’s contribution to upgrading Cospas-Sarsat, the global satellite-based search-and-rescue system. Since its introduction in 1981, Cospas-Sarsat is estimated to have saved 45,000 lives.
The current MEOSAR (Mid-Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) upgrade is based on the EU’s Galileo satellite constellation that carries a dedicated Cospas-Sarsat payload for the 406-MHz distress beacons that give users free access to global system.
The addition of Galileo (and other GNSS satellites) to the system has already enabled a dramatic increase in performance in terms of better accuracy to locate activated distress beacons and vastly improved global coverage.
“With the Galileo system, all parts of the world will be covered at least every 10 minutes — previously this was up to four hours — and guaranteed location accuracy is reduced from 10 to 2 kilometers,” explained Jolanda van Eijndthoven from the European Commission.
As well as the 23 SAR payloads currently provided by Galileo, with more to come, the EU also provides ground infrastructure including MEO Local User Terminals (LUTs) to pick up the signals relayed from the satellites. These LUTs are not just in Europe, and a fourth facility is o be opened soon on La Reunion island to improve coverage across the Indian Ocean.
Return link reassurance
From the end of the year the Galileo system will also provide a Return Link Service (RLS) that will be able to send an acknowledgement to the victim that their distress signal has been received and help is on its way. This new ability to provide reassurance should deliver a valuable psychological lift to victims and further boost survival rates.
“The PLBs developed under our Horizon 2020 projects will be the first ones on the market to have the RLS capability,” said Fiammetta Diani.
Back on dry land, Tara confessed that the simulation had felt very real to her. “The scariest part was the transfer to the helicopter from the rescue boat,” she said. “The winch was like a lift without a floor and very fast! Stepping from the flimsy life raft to the ORKA was also not easy – those waves were high!”
“The operation went just like clockwork,” concluded Paul Flament Head of the Galileo and EGNOS unit at the European Commission’s DG GROW.
Orolia has introduced the McMurdo Horizon system, an S- and L- band compatible phased array system featuring antennas developed by Ball Aerospace with horizon-to-horizon coverage to capture search-and-rescue signals relayed from orbiting satellites immediately after line-of-sight is established.
The McMurdo Horizon system is now available to enhance regional search and rescue services worldwide with technology to complement existing and emerging ground-based systems at Medium-altitude Earth Orbit Search and Rescue (MEOSAR)ground stations.
Orolia’s McMurdo Horizon Medium Earth Orbit Local User Terminal (MEOLUT) can deliver enhanced search and rescue coverage and second-generation signal processing capabilities, in a compact form factor with no moving parts. The key technology innovation, based on a modified off-the-shelf phased array antenna developed by Ball Aerospace, is a custom-designed Orolia solution.
By pointing to satellites near the horizon, the McMurdo Horizon MEOLUT can detect and locate emergency beacons much farther away. This enhanced detection ability, combined with the McMurdo Selective Schedule Algorithm, enables the system to monitor more diverse regions, including the translation of oblong and irregular data points that are invisible to traditional systems.
The European Commission (EC) has awarded Thales Alenia Space a contract to develop and build an operational ground station on La Reunion Island to track GNSS satellites in medium Earth orbit. The ground station will be an operational part of the Galileo search-and-rescue (SAR) system.
The contract includes one Medium Orbit Local User Terminal (MEOLUT), engineering support and maintenance services for one year, and the hosting site on La Reunion Island.
Using Thales Alenia Space’s powerful and compact MEOLUT Next phased-array solution, the EC and European GNSS Agency (GSA) will improve their contribution to the Cospas-Sarsat system.
Thales Alenia Space is a joint venture between Thales (67 percent) and Leonardo (33 percent).
The ground station will receive and process 406-MHz distress beacon signals from the MEO satellites being tracked, and relay them to the SAR/Galileo network via the French Mission Control Center (FMCC) at the CNES facility in Toulouse. The contract also included the procurement of the best possible hosting site for this ground station.
Image: International Cospas-Sarsat Programme
This MEOLUT Next will enhance the EC’s contribution to the Cospas-Sarsat SAR system by extending its coverage in the South Indian ocean, contributing to worldwide coverage. It complements the three MEOLUTs that are already deployed around Europe — in Larnaca (Cyprus), Maspalomas (Grand Canaria) and Spitzbergen (Norway) — and under responsibility of the GSA.
The MEO system, which replaces the legacy LEO (low Earth orbit) system, is designed to offer a faster response and better location data in near real time for search-and-rescue authorities, using spacecraft and ground facilities to detect and locate signals from the 406-MHz distress beacons.
The MEOLUT Next will also support the second generation of Cospas-Sarsat beacons. The SAR/Galileo site on La Reunion will be fitted with reference and calibration beacons to monitor the performance of the extended SAR ground segment and precisely calibrate MEOLUT measurements.
“Using Thales Alenia Space’s powerful and compact MEOLUT Next phased array solution, the European Commission will benefit from the world’s first spaceborne search & rescue system of this type,” said Philippe Blatt, vice president, Navigation France at Thales Alenia Space. “We are very proud that our advanced technology is now recognized by many customers worldwide. The performance logged by our MEOLUT Next units in service far exceeds requirements, which not only benefits our customer countries, but also makes travel even safer. It’s worth remembering that the Cospas-Sarsat system, operational since 1988, saves some 1,500 lives a year.”
Thales Alenia Space designs, operates and delivers satellite-based systems for governments and institutions, helping them position and connect anyone or anything, everywhere. Since commissioning in 2016, MEOLUT Next has delivered unrivaled performance, detecting distress signals from more than 5,000 kilometers away. Several countries have already chosen or are interested in the technology, including Canada and Togo.
Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery from Maxar’s MDA RADARSAT-2 satellite will become available to SecureWatch subscribers on Oct. 1, according to DigitalGlobe.
SecureWatch, DigitalGlobe’s cloud-based geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) platform, will now combine the company’s high-resolution optical imagery and MDA’s SAR imagery in one platform, enabling defense and intelligence analysts to deliver actionable insights to decision makers regardless of weather and light conditions, the company said.
Maxar’s MDA will refresh hundreds of global sites on a weekly basis using RADARSAT-2’s Wide Ultra Fine format (3 meter resolution, 50 kilometer scene width).
RADARSAT-2 imagery allows users to observe features and changes that go undetected using other imaging techniques, and provides day and night coverage regardless of weather.
SecureWatch users can access timely RADARSAT-2 imagery using current subscription plans. When combined with 30 cm optical imagery, analysts will have an even more uniquely powerful and reliable toolset to perform analysis to make decisions with confidence, the company said.
“Adding RADARSAT-2 imagery to SecureWatch is a perfect demonstration of Maxar Technologies’ unique promise: create valuable, integrated and innovative solutions that address customers’ critical challenges,” said Mike Greenley, group president of MDA. “MDA’s RADARSAT-2 information has played a key role in supporting security missions for over two decades, and partnering with our sister company, DigitalGlobe, immediately enhances our offerings and expands our global reach.”
“SecureWatch subscribers now have an exciting new tool to enrich GEOINT gathering and decision-making,” said Dan Jablonsky, DigitalGlobe president. “Combining SAR and optical imagery takes analysts’ abilities to the next level to deliver powerful insights into what’s happening in their areas of interest and allows them to save lives, resources and time.”
China has already launched eight BeiDou-3 satellites for its domestic BeiDou Navigation Satellite System. The satellites will provide initial services for countries and regions along the Belt and Road by the end of the year, said Wang Li, chairman of the China Satellite Navigation System Committee.
Addressing the Ninth China Satellite Navigation Conference in Harbin, capital of northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, Wang said the BeiDou system is moving to become a global service provider after offering stable and reliable time and space information for clients in the Asia-Pacific region.
China launched the first two BeiDou-3 satellites into space via a single carrier rocket in November 2017, as its self-developed BeiDou system officially began to expand into a global network.
Compared to earlier generation satellites, the BeiDou-3 is able to send signals that are more compatible with other satellite navigation systems and provide satellite-based augmentation, as well as search-and-rescue services in accordance with international standards. Its positioning accuracy has reached 2.5 to 5 meters.
By Carmela Ruta, Francesco Paggi and Monica Gotta, Thales Alenia Space-Italia; D. Oskam, Airbus Defence and Space; and Rafael Lucas Rodriguez and Igor Stojkovic; European Space Agency / Presented at the European Navigation Conference, Switzerland, May 2017
The European Space Agency, Thales Alenia Space-Italy and Airbus Defence and Space contributed to the Search and Rescue/Galileo Forward Link system deployment and performance evaluation with a full-scale System Performance Validation test campaign, aimed at evaluating the performances of the SAR/Galileo system, in terms of distress detection rate, localization probability and localization accuracy.
Forward Link Message Detection probability in 10 minutes.
The paper describes SAR/Galileo principles and the COSPAS-SARSAT MEOSAR concept (detection and localisation of distress events based on MEO satellites). It presents the space and ground segments of the Galileo infrastructure that enables the SAR/Galileo Forward Link Service provision and the main inherent performances of the system. The SPV test campaign is described in terms of objectives and organization; the main results are presented, and the foreseen milestones for SAR/Galileo deployment are summarized.
Global availability of 5 km beacon localisation accuracy (95%) in 10 minutes.
