Monica Jackson
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has selected Thales to build a facility at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico for receiving and processing distress beacon signals from Global Navigation Satellite System satellites.
Thales said Monday it will establish the Southwest USA Medium-Earth Orbit Local User Terminal to support NOAA’s Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking program.
MEOLUT is intended to help the agency examine and relay signals in the 406 MHz radio frequency from GNSS spacecraft to SARSAT’s mission control center to notify search-and-rescue organizations about emergency situations.
The Holloman ground station will coordinate with other MEOLUTs located in Hawaii and Florida.
NOAA also plans to leverage Thales Alenia Space‘s MEOLUT Next terminals that are designed to recognize signals from more than 3K miles.
The GNSS satellites operating in medium-Earth orbit include America’s Global Positioning System, Europe’s Galileo, the Russian Federation’s Glonass and China’s BeiDou.
