Summary: The electronic locator beacons that have been installed on most airplanes and vessels since the early 1980s have been responsible for saving literally tens of thousands of lives. Still, the old system has shortcomings. Its not always durable enough to survive airplane crashes, the satellite constellation it relies on doesnt cover 100 percent of the globe, and it doesnt always convey distress signals as quickly as rescuers would like. But there's a new generation of beaconing technology on the horizon. Lisa Mazzuca, the search and rescue mission manager at NASA, tells Federal Drive with Tom Temin it's very close to solving all of those problems.
