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When weather struck…

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The Gloria A Dios was violently

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rolled over. I was caught by my right

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knee and dragged under the surface of the Atlantic.

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saw her sail away and leave me there

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and I was alone in the dark in the storm.

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Two hundred and fifty miles off shore

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I could feel the heat just draining out of me.

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His only chance for survival, was a signal sent to space just before

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he was dragged under water. Denniss’

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emergency beacon activated and transmitted a distress signal

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riggering a chain reaction into an intricate Search And Rescue

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Satellite-Aided Tracking System that has been saving lives since

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1982. NASA, NOAA, the U.S.

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Air Force, and the U.S. Coast Guard are working together to eliminate

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this search, out of search and rescue to reduce the amount of time

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to reach victims in distress.

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The reality is, is that there’ve been over twenty seven thousand people saved

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by this system, many of which were been done by the GOES satellites.

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The GOES weather satellites have the ability to constantly

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oversee a large area of the Earth, and send real time

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data to users. Every country that can see the GOES satellite is able to pick

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up the distress down link. The beacon goes of and sends a

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message out to whoever can hear it. A GOES satellite

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if it’s in view of the beacon will see it and then it’ll take

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that message and just relay it, repeat it back down to the ground.

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The EPIRB I had was an older model, and so it did not

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encrypt a GPS location into the signal. If the distress

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is from an old beacon, which does not transmit its

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own location, then the GOES satellites provide an immediate

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alert. Then you wait until the POES satellite

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flies over and gives you the location. These beacons

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can be encoded with GPS location and that’s

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been an advancement over the last fifteen years. This allows us to not

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only speed up the rescue coordination effort but

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the chances of survival for someone in a distressed environment is pretty significant.

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Purchasing and registering a beacon was critical in

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saving Deniss’ life. That information that’s coming from,

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directly from the distress beacon to the satellites is the one key link that we have

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to actually find out where something is happening and hopefully

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again if the beacon is registered, tell us who

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that beacon belongs to. Technology developed by NASA

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and operated by NOAA led to a quick coast guard response

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and a challenging navy rescue. That diver came

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down in there navy, U.S. Navy. He came down into that storm

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for me, that is the bravest thing I’ve ever seen

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anybody do in my life. The helicopter took me to the deck of the Eisenhower;

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I’d been cold and wet for four days, didn’t have any

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shoes but I was sure glad to be there. People

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take for granted the risks the rescue personnel,

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so anything we can do to minimize the area that they have to cover,

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the amount of hours they have to fly, is better for them.

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A new system called the Distress Alerting Satellite

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System or DASS is currently being tested successfully

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at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The

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Distress Alerting System will carry a search and rescue

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repeater on a complete constellation of satellites.

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In the case that the GPS system that means twenty-four satellites

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will be lessening for victims all over the surface of

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the Earth. With the new system the information that we get will be quicker,

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it will be more accurate from the instant that there is a distress