MR 109–( ) OPERATION MANUAL
T01008-MRR-0000
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5.4.2. GEOLUTs
(http://www.cospas-sarsat.org)
GEOLUT is a ground receiving station in the Cospas-Sarsat System that receives and processes
406 MHz distress beacon signals which have been relayed by a Cospas-Sarsat geostationary satel-
lite. Due to the extremely large continuous coverage footprint provided by each geostationary satellite,
GEOLUTs are able to produce near instantaneous alerting over extremely large areas. However, due
to the fact that the satellite remains stationary with respect to distress beacons, GEOLUTs are not
able to determine beacon locations using Doppler processing techniques. In view of this, 406 MHz
beacons with location protocols allow for the encoding of position data in the transmitted 406 MHz
message, thus providing for quasi-real time alerting with position information via the GEOSAR sys-
tem.
The blue cells in the table below indicate which GEOSAR satellite is tracked by specific GEOLUTs.
GEOLUT
GEOSAR Satellite
GOES-East GOES-West
GOES-9
INSAT
MSG-1
1 - Algiers, Algeria
2 - Ezeiza, Argentina
3 - Brasilia, Brazil
4 - Recife, Brazil
5 - Edmonton, Canada
6 - Ottawa, Canada
7 - Santiago, Chile
8 - Toulouse, France
9 - Bangalore, India *
10 - Wellington, New Zealand
11 - Maspalomas, Spain *
12 - Combe Martin, United Kingdom
13 - Maryland, USA
The map below depicts the location of GEOLUTs in the Cospas-Sarsat Sys-
tem.
Image provided courtesy of Cospas-Sarsat
* The Bangalore GEOLUT tracking INSAT and the Maspalomas GEOLUT tracking MSG have yet to be formally
commissioned into the Cospas-Sarsat System. Nevertheless, the SAR alert data they produce is distributed to
SAR Services.
