Study on development strategy for SAR/Galileo ground system in Korea

COSPAS-SARSAT is the search and rescue system for providing a distress alarm and a position identification using an international satellite system and ground facilities. Aviators, mariners and land users worldwide are equipped with COSPAS-SARSAT distress beacons, which could help save their lives in emergency situations anywhere in the world. As the existing COSPAS-SARSAT system is generally operated by LEO(Low-altitude Earth Orbit) Satellite System, the time from the distress beacon to the rescue is more than 1 hour with average and the accuracy of the distress location is about 5 Km. In order to overcome this drawback, the development for the next generation SAR(search and rescue) system which uses the MEO(Middle-altitude Earth Orbit) satellites is going on the Galileo project. EU is developing this project for the full operation capability in 2011, and this project will have SAR payloads and support to the search and rescue service-herein called SAR/Galileo. SAR/Galileo will have the performance of a few meter accuracy, within 10 minutes to rescue from reception of distress messages, and Return Link Service(from the SAR operator to the distress emitting beacon), thereby facilitating more efficient rescue operations and helping to reduce the rate of false alerts. As the disaster is larger every year, the next generation SAR/Galileo ground system is urgently needed for the lifesaving. So, this research for developing the SAR/Galileo ground system including the SAR/Galileo beacon and the ground station is very timely and is important. This paper presents the procedures and the strategies for the participation, the potential development field, and the propulsion organization for developing the SAR/Galileo ground system in Korea.