The British Coast Guard picked up the EPIRB signals and launched a search and rescue mission .
Meanwhile , in rough seas , a merchant vessel tried and failed four times to rescue the sailor . Finally , 36 hours later , another ship was able to save him .
EPIRBs send signals to COSPAS-SARSAT , an international satellite system for search and rescue . Satellites that pick up distress signals transmit them to ground stations that then forward them to rescue agencies . NASA says the system has helped rescue more than 50,000 people worldwide since 1982 — including 275 rescues at sea in 2022 alone . The 62 COSPAS-SARSAT satellites are one small element in the rapidly filling realm above the atmosphere .
Satellites enable precision agriculture , monitor the environment , track pollution , monitor illegal activity in protected areas — and , of course , power the GPS that lets us find the nearest coffee shop or make our way in a strange city . All the while , satellites have gotten cheaper , smaller and smarter . The tiniest devices , picosatellites , weigh under two pounds . Nanosatellites , or nanosats , weigh in at less than 22 pounds , with microsatellites reaching around 220 pounds .
These miniature orbiters enable a new business model : space as a service . Instead of spending millions of dollars and years designing and building their own satellites , anyone with a small budget and an idea can rent computing cycles or space on this new generation of spacefaring hardware .
Like SaaS for space Space as a service follows the well-established software-as-a-service model , with similar benefits . In the early days of the internet , if you wanted to run complicated applications , you had to buy racks and racks of computers and expensive software .
PHOTO BY JOHN LUND / GETTY IMAGES
26