COSPAS-SARSAT Space Applications
Cospas-Sarsat
SEARCH AND RESCUE
The Cospas-Sarsat system continued to develop from 1984-1987 with progress reports being issued from time to time detailing the launch of a new satellite and the commissioning of new ground sta tions, and reporting the numbers of incidents and lives which had been saved as a result of the service.
In May 1984, reporting the completion of the third Soviet ground station in Vladivostok, Moscow and Arkhangelsk already being in service, it was expected that the service would be operating at full capacity in 1990. Until that time the system had helped to register 25 shipwrecks and 44 air accidents involving, for the most part, "small fishing boats or private yachts and planes which take to the sea or to the air in any weather and are not always manned by people qualified enough to steer their craft safely in adverse conditions." 129 A later report added that some 200 people had been saved. 130 The station, serving the Pacific Ocean, Sea of Okhotsk, the South China Sea and Sakhalin, was reported as having been established more than eighteen months after the May 1984 an nouncement. 1 31
The seventh session of the coordinating group was held in Lenin grad in October 1984. Location of distressed craft was said to be pinpointed with an accuracy of 1 km. More than 100 rescue oper ations had been carried out and over 250 people had been saved. 132 Representatives of the four founder states (the Soviet Union, United States, France and Canada) adopted a joint "Document on mutual understanding" which stipulated the terms of entry of third countries. 133
The 1 km precision noted above would appear to have been overly optimistic. At the end of 1986, Aleksandr Dunayev, head of Glavkosmos, told journalists that new instrumentation would pin point the location of an accident to with 2-3 km and that, up to that time, a precision of only 12 km had been achieved. 134
The eighth session was held in Seattle, in August 1985. At this meeting, Yuri Atserov, chairman of Morsyiazsputnik, 135 said that more than 500 lives had been saved. He said that Britain, Norway, Bulgaria, Finland and Denmark had gradually joined the system and that a decision on the joining of Brazil had been taken at the Seattle session. He said that a new Soviet radio buoy used in the system was on display at an exhibition in Moscow. 136
The 25th working meeting was held in Moscow in November 1986. It was reported that Britain and Norway had erected ground stations and that Bulgaria and India were expected to join soon. The participants in the system were preparing a draft intergovernmental agreement which would enable the system to be shared by all countries. 137
The number of persons who had been rescued through use of the system passed the one thousand mark after five years of operation in 1987. 138 At a meeting in Dublin, Ireland, in May 1988, it was reported that the total had reached 1,100. 139
One of the first adverse statements about the system appeared in Komsomolskaya Pravda, which noted that the Ministry of Commu nications Equipment Industry was "constantly failing to observe the manufacturing deadlines of special radio beacons, or manufac tured them to a quality standard that was not very high. As a result, operations to rescue people cost a great deal, each hour of flight costing Aeroflot 700 rubles." 14°
An article giving an account of an operation for rescuing the pas sengers and crew of an AN-2 airplane, which had crash-landed in a remote area of the Taymyr National Region (Okrug) criticized flaws in the Cospas-Sarsat system which had located the airplane by picking up an emergency signal broadcast by a transmitter which was onboard the plane. 141
The writer complained that the Cospas-Sarsat system fell far short of being adapted to the needs of the Soviet Union, in that equipment installed in stations for receiving signals from space had not been perfected and did not permit the coordinates of the disas ter victims to be computed quickly and precisely. It was claimed that rescue teams usually obtained their information from tracking stations of other countries and that malfunctions occurred regularly in Soviet stations' apparatus.
The writer had formed the impression that "the people responsi ble for operating the Soviet part of the system were in too much of a hurry to report its commissioning." 142 It was pointed out that the potentialities of the Cospas-Sarsat system were not really acces sible to Soviet users since the Soviet Union had never produced EPIRBs for the system. It had been fortunate that the crashed AN- 2 had carried an emergency transmitter tuned to the satellite's fre quency and that the accident had occurred not far from a permanent airfield. The article concluded by posing the question, "But what is to be done by the many travelers who lack even such simple radio sets and whose routes take them thousands of kilome ters from dwelling places and roads?" 143
Oceanographers of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences' Marine Hydrophysics Institute and the Lvov Polytechnical Institute have used the Cospas-Sarsat system for studying ocean currents in the tropical zone of the Atlantic Ocean near the coasts of Suriname, Guyana and Brazil. The system provided from five to seven daily contacts with buoys equipped with special transmitters which had been set adrift from vessels passing through the designated start ing points. 144 The experiment was conducted during March 1985 using two LOBAN expendable buoys, released from the scientific research vessel Akademik Vernadskiy. Preliminary estimates showed that the cost of manufacture of a single buoy (5000 to 7000 rubles) and the period of independent functioning (not less than 100 to 150 days) justified their mass use. 145
Cosmos 1574, carrying the Cospas 3 equipment, was the only sat ellite in the system to be launched after the end of 1983. For com pleteness, Table 28 lists the three satellites which carry Cospas equipment. Although all three had been replaced as operational civil navigation satellites, their Cospas equipment was still func tioning and filling its role as of the end of 1987.
TABLE 28.—COSPAS SATELLITES: 1982-1987
Payload name Launch date Apogee Perigee Incl. 1
Cosmos 1383 COSPAS 1 ................................... 6/29/82 1028 989 82.9 105.3
Cosmos 1447 COSPAS 2 ................................... 3/24/83 1013 959 83.0 104.8
Cosmos 1574 COSPAS 3 ................................... 6/21/84 1008 969 83.0 104.9
Notes:
- Apogee and perigee heights in kilometers, inclination in degrees, and orbital periods in minutes.
- Orbital data, which may differ from that given in the Master Log, has been computed from two line orbital element sets provided by NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center. - The Cospas 1, 2 and 3 satellites are in the civilian navigation satellite planes 11, 13 and 14 respectively.
- Although all three host satellites have been replaced as operational navigation satellites, their Cospas equipment continues to function as of
December 31, 1987. - Table prepared for the Congressional Research Service by G. E. Perry.
References:
A . SOVIET SPACE PROGRAMS: 1981-87, SPACE SCIENCE, SPACE APPLICATIONS, MILITARY SPACE PROGRAMS, ADMINISTRATION, RESOURCE BURDEN, AND MASTER LOG OF SPACEFLIGHTS, Part 2, April 1989, Printed for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 1989, Committee print 1981-87- part-2
129. TASS, 0857 GMT, May 30, 1984.
130. TASS, 0857 GMT, June 30, 1984.
131. TASS, 1611 GMT, Jan. 20, 1986.
132. TASS, 0819 GMT, Oct. 2, 1984.
133. TASS, 2108 GMT, Oct. 5, 1984.
34. TASS, 1340 GMT, Dec. 4, 1986.
35. Yuri Atserov retired in Feb. 1988 and was succeeded by Valeriy Bogdanov. (Ocean Voice.
Inmarsat. London, Apr. 1988, p. 6. )
36. TASS, 0940 GMT, Aug. 7, 1985.
37. Izvestiya, Nov. 20, 1986.
38. Aviation Week and Space Technology, Nov. 30, 1987, p. 71.
39. Moscow World Service, 2200 GMT, May 27, 1988.
40 Moscow Home Service, 0500 GMT, June 7, 1986.
41. Sovetskaya Rossiya, Aug. 20, 1987, p. 4.
42. Ibid.
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