CONTACT:     Patricia Viets, NOAA             FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
             Lt. Mark Moran, NOAA             8/27/97
             Specialist Wanda Womack, Army

A facility that will test emergency radio beacons used for international search and rescue applications will be dedicated on Sept. 4 at the Army's Electronic Proving Ground in Fort Huachuca, Ariz. The new facility, the first of its kind in the United States, will conduct certification testing on the beacons, the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced today.

Currently, if a U.S. manufacturer plans to produce an emergency beacon for use with the international search and rescue system known as Cospas-Sarsat, that manufacturer must coordinate with a lab in the United Kingdom or France. This can cause delays, complicated logistics and increased costs. After Sept. 4, U.S. manufacturers will have a state-of-the-art facility in their own backyard.

Before approval of a new beacon design, or of modifications to an existing design, each manufacturer must submit a production beacon for a thorough battery of certification tests at a Cospas-Sarsat approved facility. Upon successful completion of these tests, the design is given Cospas-Sarsat certification, which allows for worldwide sale of the beacon.

"The real beauty of the Electronic Proving Ground test lab is that it uses existing public facilities to fill a need," said James T. Bailey, NOAA SARSAT program director. "This is truly a win-win situation for all involved. Beacon manufacturers benefit by working with a test lab in their home country and the taxpayers benefit by fuller use of an existing resource." All start-up and operating costs will be paid by fees charged to manufacturers.

The Cospas-Sarsat system is an international, humanitarian, cooperative search and rescue program, which uses U.S. and Russian satellites to detect and locate emergency beacon signals from people in distress. The SARSAT instruments are built by Canada and France and flown aboard the NOAA series of polar-orbiting satellites and the GOES series of geostationary satellites. NOAA is the agency in the United States responsible for administering and operating the system. Since its inception in 1982, Cospas-Sarsat has helped save more than 7,300 lives worldwide and 3,000 in the United States.

The Army's Electronic Proving Ground, established in 1954, has a wealth of experience in testing electronic devices for use on the battlefield. Personnel there will now be able to apply that expertise to emergency beacons. One benefit gained by locating the beacon test facility at EPG is their extensive experience with the Global Positioning System (GPS). Cospas-Sarsat plans to implement a change to the system that will allow emergency beacons to transmit their positions directly to the satellites using GPS receivers. This new capability will require certification of an entirely new type of emergency beacon.

Representatives from NOAA, the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Coast Guard and the Cospas-Sarsat Secretariat in London will attend the ceremony on Sept. 4. Representatives from a number of American and Canadian beacon manufacturers will also attend.

Notes to Editors:

1. Additional information on Cospas-Sarsat can be found on the World Wide Web at:

http://psbsgi1.nesdis.noaa.gov:8080/SARSAT/homepage.html

2. COSPAS is the English acronym translation of the Russian name of Space System for Search of Vessels in Distress. SARSAT stands for Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking.