NASA partners with research consortium to improve distress beacon technology

NASA’s Search and Rescue office is collaborating with a consortium of universities and other research organizations organized as SmartSat Cooperative Research Center (CRC) in order to improve on existing satellite-related technology that aids in search and rescue efforts around the world.

The Search and Rescue office for NASA, which is based out of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will act in an advisory capacity, providing SmartSat CRC with expertise in the development of both distress-related communications and navigation technology, according to a NASA press release.

“We’re proud to lend the engineering expertise of our Search and Rescue office as SmartSat CRC works on next-generation rescue technologies,” Christyl Johnson, Goddard deputy director for Research and Technology Investments, said in the press release. “Goddard is excited about this new partnership and the new capabilities that it will foster.”

The NASA team will bring their three decades of experience in helping to develop technology for Cospas-Sarsat, an international distress location data system