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In the past several years traffic in and
around the Arctic has significantly increased.
Higher traffic in this region likely
leads to an increased need for
search and rescue capabilities.
This map shows several of the shipping
routes through the Arctic. In 2008, fifty two
cargo ships tugboats and tankers
navigated these treacherous waters.
That number increased to 144 in 2013.
By 2025, more than 2,100 vessels are expected to
complete thousands of transits through the Arctic.
This region has been monitored by the
COSPAS SARSAT Satellite System.
Since 1982, the COSPAS SARSAT system has
provided worldwide coverage for
distress beacons. Including the Arctic, this system has aided in more than 41,000
rescue operations across the world,
including 8,000 in the United States.
Countless people owe their lives to this system.
The COSPAS SARSAT Satellite System
that monitors the Arctic, is well beyond
its current lifespan, increasing the
chances of an outage. NEOSAR, which is the next
generation of the COSPAS SARSAT Satellite System,
will not be fully operational until
the early to mid 2020s time-frame.
With this need in mind, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Science and Technology,
in concert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
United States Coast Guard and the
United States Air Force Space Rapid Capabilities Office,
have worked together to demonstrate a
search and rescue capability, with the Polar Scout Cube SATs.
Polar Scout is a set of two satellites
with a payload that can sense emergency beacons
from boats, airplanes, and other
distress emitters. Polar Scout plans to
demonstrate its ability to compliment,
or gap-fill those satellites monitoring
the Arctic and other remote areas.
In 2013, Space RCO initiated an effort
to develop rapid manufacturing tied to a
modular spacecraft bus. This bus, also utilizes
responsive space parts that are
a combination of commercial
off-the-shelf parts and small satellite
parts that can meet rapid time-lines of
less than a year. This design, which was
developed by the Air Force and NASA is
scaled and reusable between other government agencies.
The two Polar Scout spacecraft
were built and put through a robust test
campaign at production facilities in Albuquerque New Mexico.
The test campaign included all production
testing, and system testing, including
functional day-in-the-life testing and
space environmental testing.
These CubeSats, which are the size of a shoebox,
were installed into an integrated payload
stack, or IPS that houses more than sixty satellites.
The IPS is then integrated onto a launch vehicle
and deployed into orbit.
Because of the small size of the spacecraft,
you don't need a dedicated launch vehicle.
Once in orbit, the IPS then releases
CubeSats in a time deployment sequence.
As you can see, instead of only getting one satellite
into space with a single launch, CubeSat technology
allows us to deploy several at the same time.
In 2017, the Indian Space Agency
deployed more than eighty CubeSats on a single launch.
Once deployed in a sun-synchronous orbit,
the Polar Scout satellites will demonstrate the
ability to support COSPAS-SARSAT
Satellite System in the Arctic, and other remote regions.
When an emergency beacon activates,
the signal will transmit and be received
by one, or both of the Polar Scout Satellites in orbit.
The signal is then pre-processed on board
and down linked to the ground for processing of
the beacon signal information and location.
Polar Scout will then downlink the distress call,
which will then be relayed to emergency responders.
In the demonstration of Polar Scout,
the satellites will downlink the distress call
to the next available ground station.
From there the signal is sent to the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
then the signal along with the
geographic coordinates are relayed to
the Regional Coast Guard Station,
where rescue crews can respond to an emergency.
Set to launch in late 2018, the Polar Scout
demonstration will show a possible
solution if the COSPAS-SARSAT Satellite System needs to be augmented.
As more traffic navigates these treacherous
waters, Polar Scout could be a critical
component of supporting the nation's
readiness for search and rescue in any remote region.
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