The Cospas-Sarsat System is a satellite-based Search and Rescue international initiative, initially setup by Canada, France, Russia and USA. It provides a free of charge service available to maritime, aviation and personal users (such as backcountry hikers), allowing the relay of emergency alerts from beacons worldwide on a non-discriminatory basis. Galileo support to the Search and Rescue service, herein SAR/Galileo, represents Europe's contribution to the Cospas-Sarsat system and plays a key role in the Medium Earth Orbit Search and Rescue System, MEOSAR. In addition to the Forward Link Alert Service (from beacon in distress to rescue coordination centres) the SAR/Galileo Service will also introduce a new Search and Rescue function, called the Return Link Service (RLS), which provides acknowledgment messages to distress beacons equipped with a Galileo receiver, through the Galileo El signal. Galileo will be the first GNSS system to provide this service worldwide. The Return Link Service can be seen as an enabler and opens up a wide range of possibilities for future services. While today it is limited to providing an automatic acknowledgement from the Cospas-Sarsat mission control centres via the Galileo system to the beacon, the principles it is based on can be used to provide a multitude of different functionalities. The European Union is already working on the evolutions of the service to enable exploitation of such functionalities. A non-exhaustive list of new functionalities includes: - RLS messaging: This entails the possibility to send acknowledgements and other more elaborate messages to the beacon in distress from a Rescue Coordination Centre. - Remote activation of a beacon from the ground. This functionality is studied in the context of civil aviation (e.g. in case of aircraft disappearance) but could also be applicable to maritime (EPIRB) or leisure (PLB) applications. - Remote deactivation of a beacon upon SAR mission completion, where it was not possi
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