Deal on using satellites for global flight-tracking in sight: US

[jung41]

Countries are nearing agreement on using satellites to track flights, as they strive to prevent a repeat of the mysterious disappearance of flight MH370 in March 2014, a high-level US official said Thursday.

"We believe the world is close to a solution on global flight tracking," said US ambassador Decker Anstrom, who heads Washington's delegation to a large United Nations conference in Geneva on evolving information and communications technologies.

Representatives of more than 160 countries are taking part in the month-long World Radiocommunications Conference (WRC-15), which kicked off this week and is hosted by the UN's International Telecommunication Union every four years.

High on the agenda is the bid to determine the technical requirements for creating a flight tracking system that can ensure complete surveillance of the global airspace and avoid incidents like the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 on March 8, 2014.

The flight, en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people onboard, has prompted a global rethink of the way planes are tracked.

The UN's International Civil Aviation Organization has voiced support for a proposal that would make it obligatory for airlines to track their aircraft using a system that gives its location at 15-minute intervals.

But for this to be done efficiently, Canada, with the backing of all countries in North and South America, has proposed allowing the plane signals to be bounced off satellites.

Currently, ground-based radars can track a plane but coverage is spotty and fades when aircraft are out at sea or they are flying below a certain altitude.

Anstrom said conference participants broadly agreed on the need to allocate satellite spectrum -- similar to frequency -- for global flight tracking.

"We are very optimistic on the global flight tracking issue," Anstrom told reporters in Geneva.

"We think there is broad global consensus on that agenda item and that that could be handled as early as next week."

- Thornier issues -

Other points may not be so easy to agree on, including discussions on using existing satellites to provide coordinates to civilian unmanned aircraft systems, or drones.

Countries are also discussing whether to shift the way radio spectrum is used by different radio transmission technologies and applications.

The United States among others wants to see a reallocation of a significant amount of spectrum for rapidly evolving mobile technologies and the next generation 5G mobile networks.

"Without a doubt there is a crunch, some say a crisis, in terms of mobile spectrum in an environment where there is exponential growth in data services," said Tom Wheeler, chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission.

But this is a touchy subject, since most of the high quality spectrum is today used by broadcasters, and it is far from certain countries will reach agreement by the end of the conference on November 27.

 

[JSCh]

China launches cube satellites for civil aircraft tracking
Updated: 2015-10-07 15:04 (Xinhua)

BEIJING - China has successfully launched three cube satellites (CubeSats), which are expected to help track civil aircraft and ships and avoid tragedies like missing flight MH370.

The three CubeSats in a mission coded STU-2 were launched on Sept 25 and have entered their designed orbit, according to the mission's chief designer, Wu Shufan.

The three spacecraft are equipped with polar region observation cameras as well as automatic identification system (AIS) receivers for information from ships and automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) receivers for messages sent from civil flights.

The ADS-B system was developed to be installed on civil aircraft and transmit readings of the flight's position, height, speed, direction and other information automatically every second to receivers on the ground or in the air. Currently more than 70 percent of aircraft have such systems installed.

As of the evening of Sept 28, the STU-2 CubeSats had collected hundreds of thousands of ADS-B messages from more than 12,400 aircraft flying within receiving range.

The paths and traffic flow of civil flights within the satellites' monitoring area may be collected in real time.

"If there are enough satellites in orbit to cover a region wide enough, a specific flight could be tracked and that may help with spotting, search and rescue in cases like Malaysia Airlines flight MH370," Wu said.

CubeSats may also be used to provide information support for ship operations such as the Chinese icebreaker Xuelong (Snow Dragon) in polar regions.

Wu said the STU-2 mission, the first of its kind by China, is a step in the country's satellite network development for civil aircraft and ship monitoring.

He also called for more international cooperation to expand the network's reach.

Like a Rubik's cube, a CubeSat is a satellite composed of smaller cubic units. Depending on its different uses, a CubeSat may contain two, three or more such units.

Compared with other integral satellites, cube spacecraft are generally smaller, lighter and much more economical in development and production costs.

Wu said the three STU-2 CubeSats weigh only 6.8 kilograms in total.

 

[JSCh]

World nations reach deal on use of satellites to track flights
Source:AFP Published: 2015-11-12 0:53:02

World nations struck a landmark deal on Wednesday on the use of satellites to track flights, which could prove key to preventing a repeat of the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 in March 2014.

The accord was reached at a conference of 160 countries hosted by the UN's International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and aimed at improving the current civilian flight-tracking system, which relies on ground-based radar.

"In reaching this agreement ... ITU has responded in record time to the expectations of the global community on the major issue concerning global flight tracking," said Zhao Houlin, secretary-general of the ITU. An ITU statement made it clear that the deal was driven by the disappearance of flight MH370, which had 239 people on board.

World nations reach deal on use of satellites to track flights - Global Times

 

[DoTell]

Actually I wonder why airplanes still use the so called "black box"? Why can't the flight data be transmitted to base external devices such as satellites or base stations? That way you will never have to look for the black box which sometimes can't even be found. In this day and age where everyone stores gigabytes of data to the cloud from cell phones, how expense can it be so save the flight data of an airplane???