Lord, what would we do if we didn’t have ‘em?

“A GPS satellite is a satellite used by the NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS). The first satellite in the system, Navstar 1, was launched February 22, 1978. The GPS satellite constellation is operated by the 50th Space Wing of the United States Air Force…”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks

I'm too dependent on them.

I believe the Russians also have separate GPS system, at least the GPS units advertised this.

quote:

Originally posted by walkinghorse:
I believe the Russians also have separate GPS system, at least the GPS units advertised this.

It is called GLONASS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS

https://beebom.com/what-is-glo...-different-from-gps/

quote:

Originally posted by SigSAC:

quote:

Originally posted by walkinghorse:
I believe the Russians also have separate GPS system, at least the GPS units advertised this.

It is called GLONASS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS

https://beebom.com/what-is-glo...-different-from-gps/

There are also partly-operational satellite constellations from the EU (Galileo) and China (BeiDou) that are planned to be fully operational by 2020.

Japan (QZSS) and India (NAVIC) also have regional satellite constellations.

Recent generation GPS satellites started broadcasting a new, higher-frequency signal called L5 in 2018 that brings average accuracy down from the L1 signal's 10-15 feet to ~1 foot, but there aren't many devices that use the L5 signal yet. Qualcomm and Broadcom have started making L1+L5 GPS chips for smartphones, but they haven't made it into many phone models yet.

Do they still have selective availability? This is the ability to vastly degrade the accuracy of the civilian signal if the government needs to for security reasons.

Edit: Okay, I looked it up. No. They turned it off, and eventually removed the capability.