Milestone-Proposal:The first human rescue and life saving enabled by space technology: Difference between revisions

From IEEE Milestones Wiki
No edit summary
(No difference)

Revision as of 18:51, 27 February 2015


To see comments, or add a comment to this discussion, click here.

Docket #:2014-12

This Proposal has been approved, and is now a Milestone


To the proposer’s knowledge, is this achievement subject to litigation?


Is the achievement you are proposing more than 25 years old? Yes

Is the achievement you are proposing within IEEE’s designated fields as defined by IEEE Bylaw I-104.11, namely: Engineering, Computer Sciences and Information Technology, Physical Sciences, Biological and Medical Sciences, Mathematics, Technical Communications, Education, Management, and Law and Policy. Yes

Did the achievement provide a meaningful benefit for humanity? Yes

Was it of at least regional importance? Yes

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to pay for the milestone plaque(s)? No

Has an IEEE Organizational Unit agreed to arrange the dedication ceremony? No

Has the IEEE Section in which the milestone is located agreed to take responsibility for the plaque after it is dedicated? No

Has the owner of the site agreed to have it designated as an IEEE Milestone? No


Year or range of years in which the achievement occurred:

1976-1982

Title of the proposed milestone:

The first human rescue and life saving enabled by space technology 1982

Plaque citation summarizing the achievement and its significance:

DRAFT In commemoration of the first time that a human life was saved by the use of information obtained by satellite. On September XX 1982 the pilot of a light aircraft which had crashed in the mountains of British Columbia was rescued using location data obtained by use of a satellite.

200-250 word abstract describing the significance of the technical achievement being proposed, the person(s) involved, historical context, humanitarian and social impact, as well as any possible controversies the advocate might need to review.


IEEE technical societies and technical councils within whose fields of interest the Milestone proposal resides.


In what IEEE section(s) does it reside?

Ottawa

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) which have agreed to sponsor the Milestone:

IEEE Organizational Unit(s) paying for milestone plaque(s):


IEEE Organizational Unit(s) arranging the dedication ceremony:


IEEE section(s) monitoring the plaque(s):


Milestone proposer(s):


Please note: your email address and contact information will be masked on the website for privacy reasons. Only IEEE History Center Staff will be able to view the email address.

Street address(es) and GPS coordinates in decimal form of the intended milestone plaque site(s):

Communications Research Centre (CRC) 3701 Carling Ave, Ottawa, ON, K2H 8S2, Canada and/or Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM), 1867 St Laurent Blvd, Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 5A3, CANADA

Describe briefly the intended site(s) of the milestone plaque(s). The intended site(s) must have a direct connection with the achievement (e.g. where developed, invented, tested, demonstrated, installed, or operated, etc.). A museum where a device or example of the technology is displayed, or the university where the inventor studied, are not, in themselves, sufficient connection for a milestone plaque.

Please give the address(es) of the plaque site(s) (GPS coordinates if you have them). Also please give the details of the mounting, i.e. on the outside of the building, in the ground floor entrance hall, on a plinth on the grounds, etc. If visitors to the plaque site will need to go through security, or make an appointment, please give the contact information visitors will need. CRC Main lobby? CSTM Main entrance? CRC is the location of the ground staion which produced the location data for the first rescue enabled by satellite. It is an appropriate location for a plaque but is inaccessible by the public. A plaque is already there commemorating the Alouette satellite. The CSTM is an alternate location which is visited by large numbers of the general public.

Are the original buildings extant?

Yes

Details of the plaque mounting:

TBD

How is the site protected/secured, and in what ways is it accessible to the public?

TBD

Who is the present owner of the site(s)?

CRC - Government of Canada NMST - Government of Canada

What is the historical significance of the work (its technological, scientific, or social importance)? If personal names are included in citation, include justification here. (see section 6 of Milestone Guidelines)

The development was motivated by the perils to aviation in the remote areas of the Canadian wilderness and the US. For some years starting in XXXX all aircraft were required to carry an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) which would activate in a crash and would enable serach and rescue crews tohome in on a downed aircraft. However due to the need for a line of sight path between the crash site and a search aircraft the detection radius was quite limited. This resulted in lengthy and often unsuccessful searches and the consequent deaths of crash survivors. Speedy rescue is crucial to saving the lives of survivors. In the 1970s an International collaboration was established between Canada, US, the Soviet Union and later, France. This collaboration was to develop and deploy a satellite-based system which would vastly increase the detection radius for ELTs and provide a position estimate for the crash site. This would enable speedy response and rescue and thereby greatly increse the chances of survival. Canada produced a special transponder (made by SPAR Aerospace) which was fitted to an existing US TIROS weather satellite thereafter known as the SARSAT satellite. The USSR produced a similar and compatible package which was known as the COSPAS satellite. Canada also produced the ground stations (made by Canadian Astronautics Limited (CAL Corp) which detected and located the ELT. The event being commemorated was the first 'live' detection/serarch/rescue made using the system. The first COSPAS satellite had just been launched and the ground station located at CRC in Ottawa detected a crash in the remote mountain areas of British Columbia. The crash site was at the limit of detection distance, approximately 3000 miles. An accurate position was obtained and the crew were successfully saved. Since the first incident many tens of thousands of lives have been saved around the world using this technology.

What obstacles (technical, political, geographic) needed to be overcome?

The satellite-based system design utilised a measurement of the frequency of the ELT signal as the satellite passed over. The frequency measurements followed a Doppler shift trajectory, the analysis of which could determine the ELT location. The primary obstacles to success related to the ELTs in use at the time. These units were never designed or intended for the satellite technology and suffered from a number of major problems: 1 The ELTs were designed only to make a distinctive 'warble' tone in an AM aircraft receiver. They were manufactured by many suppliers. Many waere not only unstable in frequency, they were also non-coherent. These factors made the accurate measurement of frequency extremely challenging. 2 The ELT signals were 'unsignatured' meaning there was no definitive way to distniguish between one ELT signal and another. This presented extreme challenges when, due to the extremely wide visibility radius, there could be many ELTs active at once. 3 The ELT signals were very weak, especially in the event of damage caused by a crash. The frequency used was the aviation distress frequency of 121.5MHz which was also populated with stronger voice signals as well as spurious emissions from powerful broadcast transmitters. The ground signal processing system had to consistently deal with all these issues and still produce a reliable detection and position estimate on an operational basis. It represents a very early application of the techniques of digital signal processing which are commonplace nowadays.

At the time of initiation of the SARSAT/COSPAS program the 'Cold War' was extant which posed considerable obstacles to co-operation between the nations involved. (More material needed-MAS)

The system by its nature is global. While the initial focus was North America and the Soviet Union the system rapidly expanded to include more nations. (More material needed-MAS)

What features set this work apart from similar achievements?

I'm having a hard time thinking of anything similar - MAS

Supporting texts and citations to establish the dates, location, and importance of the achievement: Minimum of five (5), but as many as needed to support the milestone, such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or chapters in scholarly books. 'Scholarly' is defined as peer-reviewed, with references, and published. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. At least one of the references must be from a scholarly book or journal article. All supporting materials must be in English, or accompanied by an English translation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-PSsp2ECKg conference proceedings. To be searched. newspaper clippings. To be searched. Scholarly journal references. Maybe conference proceedings.

Supporting materials (supported formats: GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC): All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. You must supply the texts or excerpts themselves, not just the references. For documents that are copyright-encumbered, or which you do not have rights to post, email the documents themselves to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please see the Milestone Program Guidelines for more information.

To be obtained

Please email a jpeg or PDF a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner(s) giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property, and a letter (or forwarded email) from the appropriate Section Chair supporting the Milestone application to ieee-history@ieee.org with the subject line "Attention: Milestone Administrator." Note that there are multiple texts of the letter depending on whether an IEEE organizational unit other than the section will be paying for the plaque(s).

Please recommend reviewers by emailing their names and email addresses to ieee-history@ieee.org. Please include the docket number and brief title of your proposal in the subject line of all emails.