Of those rescues, 219 were from the water, 32 were from aviation incidents and 89 were on land, using personal locator beacons, or PLBs.
NOAA satellites are part of the global Search and Rescue Satellite Aided Tracking System, or Cospas-Sarsat, which uses a network of U.S. and international spacecraft to detect and locate distress signals from emergency beacons aboard aircraft, boats and from handheld personal locator beacons.
When a NOAA satellite pinpoints the location of a distress signal, the information is relayed to the SARSAT Mission Control Center at NOAA’s Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Maryland.
From there, the information is sent quickly to Rescue Coordination Centers, operated either by the U.S. Air Force for land rescues, or the U.S. Coast Guard for water rescues.
Since the Programme’s inception in 1982, Cospas-Sarsat has been credited with supporting more than 43,000 rescues worldwide, including nearly 8,700 in the United States and its surrounding waters.
See the article here: https://techxplore.com/news/2019-02-noaa-satellites-people.html
For more information and up-to-date statistics, see https://www.sarsat.noaa.gov/