Move over, Wilson the Volleyball: This is the castaway's new best friend.
The European Space Agency, using its expertise probing deep space to pierce the darkness of the seas, has developed a wearable antenna -- essentially a bat signal designed to enable search and rescue at sea.
Finnish defense company Patria and the Italian Tampere University of Technology worked with ESA to apply its space know-how to dramatically reduce the time it takes for a distress signal to be picked up, for rescue authorities to be alerted, and for help to reach a man overboard, shipwrecked or otherwise lost at sea.
So how does this new bat signal work?
Emergency radio beacons can be carried not only by ships and aircraft but also by people (where they become known in the business as "personal location beacons"). But unlike other transmitters and their long floppy antennas, the ESA's new invention resembles a small square of washcloth. There's a reason for that: This antenna can be handily sewn into a life vest.
When someone is lost at sea, the distress transmitter connects with the Cospas-Sarsat Search and Rescue system -- satellites in space that listen around the clock for activated beacons in the 406
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