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Comment by amatecha | Hacker News Reader

If you haven't seen it, this Google Map of all found debris is quite interesting: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Kghrk3iwRInii5qBTG...

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Crash aside - this is very well-done and cool map. I wish Google made maps like this more easily searchable / discoverable.

what I don't understand is: if the plane could make contact with the satellite, why aren't there automated systems in place to send location info through that channel? can someone explain?

From tfa

> In the interest of knowing where every plane is at all times, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) began requiring that all airliners manufactured after the 1st of January 2021 include autonomous tracking devices that broadcast their location once per minute.

It's bat shit insane that we're 50 years in to the industry and ~20-25 years in to GPS and this is still only happening in 2021.

It won't save lives and wouldn't have saved lives. It's only to improve the efficiency of recovery operations.

It could save future lives to know what happened, though.

There are several redundant tracking systems on an airliner, but the pilot deliberately turned them off. That hadn't been an issue before.

GPS is a one-way system though, using sattelite signals to triangulate your own position; there's no uplink / reverse contact required, and it's up to the GPS receiver to then send the location on through a ground station.

sorry, missed that.

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