Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California, has signed a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) with Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, to certify the company’s Falcon launcher for future National Security Space (NSS) missions.
By Dee Ann Divis
Dee Ann Divis, a contributing editor for Inside GNSS, has won the 2013 Dateline award for Washington Correspondent from the Society of Professional Journalists – DC Chapter for the second year in a row.
The award recognizes a series of stories published over the past year in Inside GNSS about a controversial British Ministry of Defense attempt to patent technology underlying new GNSS signals, including GPS and Galileo.
By Inside GNSS
The U.S. Air Force Space Command (AFSPC ) began testing modernized civil navigation (CNAV) message capabilities on the GPS L2C and L5 signals for the first time yesterday (June 15, 2013).
This first test period is scheduled to continue through July 1 (Julian Day 182), according to a Notice Advisory to NAVSTAR Users (NANU 2013034), although a tentative CNAV test plan shows the tests ending on June 29.
By Inside GNSS
White Sands Missile Range with locations of Locata equipment used in 2012 technology demonstration.The U.S. Air Force 746th Test Squadron (746 TS) has awarded TMC
Design Corporation a contract to install and integrate the Locata
Non‐GPS Based Positioning System (NGBPS) on White Sands Missile Range
(WSMR).
[Updated June 3, 2013] With the budget vise tightening, top Pentagon managers are readying some potentially dramatic changes to the GPS constellation — changes that promise to lower both the cost of the satellites and the expense of putting them into orbit.
The first changes would be subtle and are linked to buying the next block of GPS III satellites — a decision that sources confirm will be made by the end of September.
By Dee Ann Divis
One of 12 magnetograms recorded at Greenwich Observatory during the Great Geomagnetic Storm of 1859
1996 soccer game in the Midwest, (Rick Dikeman image)
Nouméa ground station after the flood
A pencil and a coffee cup show the size of NASA’s teeny tiny PhoneSat
Bonus Hotspot: Naro Tartaruga AUV
Pacific lamprey spawning (photo by Jeremy Monroe, Fresh Waters Illustrated)
“Return of the Bucentaurn to the Molo on Ascension Day”, by (Giovanni Antonio Canal) Canaletto
The U.S. Naval Observatory Alternate Master Clock at 2nd Space Operations Squadron, Schriever AFB in Colorado. This photo was taken in January, 2006 during the addition of a leap second. The USNO master clocks control GPS timing. They are accurate to within one second every 20 million years (Satellites are so picky! Humans, on the other hand, just want to know if we’re too late for lunch) USAF photo by A1C Jason Ridder. 
Detail of Compass/ BeiDou2 system diagram
Hotspot 6: Beluga A300 600ST
1. PESTS
State of California, USA
√ The California Agriculture department is using collective intelligence and GPS to “report a pest.” State residents can download the new CDFA smartphone app and use it to photograph and report bad bugs when they see ‘em. Those with iPhones can choose to send GPS coordinates for quick response to invasive pest emergencies.
Di Qiu at the site of her current employerSIDEBAR: Di Qiu’s Compass Points
Landing all-weather aircraft safely in storms. Protecting sensitive data not only through encryption but based on the location at which it is being accessed. Ensuring that accurate and timely information reaches first responders responding to emergencies.
Although still in the early part of her career, Di Qiu has already made significant contributions to these crucial applications of navigation technology.
By Inside GNSS
Q: How do you deal with timing differences between GNSSs?
A: All GNSSs inherently depend on precise timekeeping to measure the satellite/receiver time of flight of signal propagation with sufficient accuracy to compute ranges/distances for multilateration calculations. Each GNSS ground segment therefore dedicates considerable effort to maintaining a highly stable atomic time scale as well as the corresponding offset to global standards such as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
By Inside GNSS
Inside GNSS will host an applications-oriented web seminar on GNSS and inertial integrated systems on Tuesday, June 18.
The free event is sponsored by KVH Industries.
Webinar presenters are Xavier Orr, an R&D engineer of 3D navigation technologies at Advanced Navigation in Australia and Andrey Soloviev, principal at Qunav LLC and a research engineer who focuses on multi-sensor integration for navigation applications.
GNSS Solutions editor and University of Calgary professor Mark Petovello moderates.
Major changes for the annual PTTI meeting this year – it will be held on the West Coast, in the high-tech concentration of Seattle’s east side and it has come under the wing of the Institute of Navigation, the new organizer of the event.
PTTI 2013, the 45th systems and applications meeting for Precise Time and Time Interval managers, system engineers and program planners, will be held at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue on December 2 through 5.
By Inside GNSS
Jan Brecht-Clark, director, National Coordination Office for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and TimingWith just more than four months to go in the 2013 fiscal year, sequestration and furloughs are taking a bite out of key research and the work of the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) — the government nexus for GPS-related policy matters.
The NCO is an interagency organization, explained its director, Jan Brecht-Clark in an emailed response; so, “each individual staff member is subject to furloughs implemented by their home agency as a result of sequestration.”
By Inside GNSS
The ITU (InternationalTelecommunications Union) and the BIPM (International Bureau of Weights and Measures) will hold a workshop on the Future of Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) on September 19 and 20 at the ITU offices, Avenue Giuseppe-Motta, in Geneva, Switzerland.
By Inside GNSS
The four Galileo in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites now on orbit have begun broadcasting the “offset” between the GPS and Galileo system time, accurate to a few billionths of a second, according to the European Space Agency.
With satellite navigation based around the highly accurate measurement of signal travel times, both Galileo and GPS have their own internal reference time systems used to synchronize all system clocks, including those in the ground segment, on satellites, and in receivers. Galileo System Time is about 50 nanoseconds or less apart from GPS time.
By Inside GNSS
