[Satellite TODAY 10-13-10] NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center awarded a five-year, $5.5 million indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract to Techno-Sciences Inc. (TSI) to provide technical support, maintenance and upgrades for the Distress Alerting Satellite System (DASS) ground processor station at Goddar’s Search And Rescue Center, TSI announced Oct. 12.
     Using data received from multiple GPS satellites, the DASS ground processor system, developed by TSI, aims to provide accurate locations of emergency distress radio beacons within the first second of transmission.
     In a company statement, TSI said the upgrades would dramatically increase the speed of location. “This unprecedented speed to locate dramatically reduces the delay in starting a rescue operation and significantly improves the probability that a life will be saved. Other current distress beacon localization systems available on the market require substantially more time, sometimes as much as hours, to process received data and produce accurate beacon location estimates.”