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Maritime NZ’s search and rescue Earth Station is located halfway between Rotorua and Taupō.
They may not look like much – just a handful of green spheres and satellite dishes on farmland in the central North Island – but the equipment they house could be the difference between life and death.
Important upgrades to New Zealand’s search and rescue satellite Earth Station are underway, toimprove the accuracy and response times of emergency beacons across 30 million square kilometres of the south-west Pacific to the South Pole.
The Earth Station, located halfway between Rotorua and Taupō, is a vital link between New Zealand’s Rescue Coordination Centre NZ (RCCNZ) and the global search and rescue satellite network, and provides the initial processing of signals from distress beacons.
The changes will ensure better responses when distress beacons are activated anywhere on land, sea or air in New Zealand’s huge search and rescue region – 30 million square kilometres of the south-west Pacific, from near the equator to the South Pole, and from halfway to Australia and halfway to Chile.
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Maritime New Zealand’s Response, Security and Safety Services deputy chief executive Nigel Clifford said the upgrades would improve the accuracy of locating emergency beacons, especially in water where a beacon’s swinging aerial and water interference makes pinpointing locations difficult.
The upgrade would also create faster and steadier links to and from search and rescue satellites, detect and track an aircraft’s beacon immediately after the aircraft suffers a dramatic loss of altitude, and future-proof beacon functions.
Clifford said software upgrades, testing, and coordination with Australian search and rescue authorities would follow the physical upgrades, with completion expected by December this year.
“With such a huge search and rescue region, all improvements to communication are most welcome and can save lives,” he said.
The work is part of a step-by-step, global upgrade of the search and rescue satellite system, which also includes the first launches of new, more capable satellites that, over time, would replace the existing 50 search and rescue satellites.
Maritime NZ runs the RCCNZ from an operations room in Lower Hutt, Wellington.
The operations room is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year and coordinates all major maritime and aviation search and rescue missions within New Zealand’s search and rescue region, and all land, sea and air missions arising from distress beacons activated within the region.
The RCCNZ responds to about 1200 search and rescue incidents each year and picks up and transmits data from PLBs – personal locator beacons, EPIRBs – emergency position indicating radio beacons (from ships), and ELTs – emergency location transmitters (from aircraft).
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