Who invented satellite navigation

At the induction, the Air Force recognized Dr. Today, there are at least 31 operational GPS satellites orbing the Earth and impacting every aspect of our life. Now see: How accurate is the altimeter in a GPS watch? Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Join the team! People behind the Global Positioning System.

October 26, Geoawesomeness Digital Meetup Schedule for October 25, October 19, October 14, Interested in Sustainable Transportation and Logistics? Join us for the meetup October 10, Combine inputs from multiple satellite signals simultaneously — like viewing multiple lighthouses at once —and your location is pinpointed.

Locking on to more signals yields greater accuracy but a four is the absolute minimum required. Design trade-offs have led to a medium-Earth orbit as the optimal altitude for navigation satellite constellations, commencing with the US GPS and Russian Glonass.

There are solid practical reasons for this: medium-Earth orbits are relatively stable and the satellites move across the sky relatively slowly. Lower orbits would require more satellites to maintain the same coverage while higher orbits would reduce coverage extent.

In addition an extensive ground infrastructure distributed worldwide is required to uplink the navigation signals, keep the different clocks of the constellation synchronised and correct any onboard timing or positioning deviation. These four gentlemen are Engineering Stars. On Feb. And, on July 1, Capt. The GPS satellites are our own constellation and each of them should be named in honor of a scientist or engineer who helped conceive and develop the Transit, Timation and GPS programs; even though the earlier systems no longer exist, their legacy should long be remembered.

From those Cold War origins of a chirping beach ball traveling through space 63 years ago, now more than 2, satellites enhance our terrestrial lives providing better communication, location and understanding. We are all children of the stars, albeit stars of our own making. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to GPS World to receive more articles just like it.

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