Science Focus
original post »NASA developing next-gen search and rescue technology.
Early in July, 16-year-old Autumn Veatch was found on the side of a Washington state highway. She told the people who picked her up that she had been walking for days since the Beech A-35 she was flying in with her step-grandparents flew into a bank of clouds and then crashed in the wilderness. The plane caught fire; only Veatch was able to escape.
Veatch's own story is remarkable, but even more remarkable is that even in this extremely connected world with satellites and a survivor to guide the search teams, it still took days to find the crash site.
All planes are required to have Emergency Locator Transmitters (ELTs), according to the Washington State Department of Transportation. In the days following the wreck, search teams flew over great swaths of wilderness listening for beacon signals. They eventually found the plane in “extremely rugged and vertical” terrain in the words of the Skagit County Sheriff's Office. It's unclear whether the plane's ELTs contributed to its discovery.
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