Global Search and Rescue Day Will Recognize International Effort to Save People in Distress
September 8, 2025
The International COSPAS–SARSAT Programme, a global satellite-based monitoring initiative, which includes NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, has declared September 10, 2025 as the inaugural “Global Search and Rescue Day.”
This observance aims to honor the humanitarian efforts of the many professionals across 45 nations and independent search and rescue (SAR) organizations that make up COSPAS–SARSAT’s global operations. The date was chosen to commemorate the first rescue credited to COSPAS–SARSAT, which took place on September 10, 1982, in British Columbia, Canada.
COSPAS-SARSAT is carried out in the U.S. by the SARSAT program leads which include the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), NOAA, NASA and the Department of the Air Force.
The U.S. SARSAT system uses NOAA satellites in low-Earth and geostationary orbits, as well as GPS satellites in medium-Earth orbit, to detect and locate aviators, mariners, and land-based users in distress in and around the United States.
When an emergency distress beacon is activated, NOAA satellites relay its signal to a network of ground stations and ultimately to the U.S. Mission Control Center (USMCC) in Suitland, Maryland. From there, the information is quickly sent to Rescue Coordination Centers, operated either by the U.S. Air Force for land rescues, or the USCG for maritime rescues.
As of September 5, 2025, 215 people had been rescued in and around the U.S. and its waters this year, including five people who were rescued from a plane crash in Coos Bay, Ore., in April. Since the first rescue in 1982, more than 63,000 people have been rescued worldwide.
Find more information about emergency beacons and register your beacon online with NOAA. Registration is required by law and the information you give helps provide better and faster assistance to people in distress, reduces false alarms and may also indicate what type of help is needed.
