A: System Categories Archives - Page 129 of 228 - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

Arianespace Inquiry Identifies Source of Galileo Launch Anomaly; Next Attempt Could Come in December

In a report issued Tuesday (October 7, 2014), an Independent Inquiry Board formed to analyze the cause of the August 22 launch anomaly that placed two Galileo into the wrong orbits has concluded that frozen fuel lines caused a misfiring of attitude control thrusters on the launcher’s Fregat module.

According to the report, the problem can be remedied on the rockets in time for another launch in December, much sooner than some observers had speculated.

By Inside GNSS

OxTS Offers Lightweight INS OEM Board

xOEM500

Oxford Technical Solutions Ltd. (OxTS) has announced its first inertial navigation OEM board set with integrated GNSS — the xOEM500, which the company is promoting at this week’s (October 7–9, 2014) Intergeo trade show in Berlin, Germany.

By Inside GNSS

October 6, 2014

CSNC 2015: 6th China Satellite Navigation Conference

The Terracotta Army inside the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum in Xi’an

The 2015 China Satellite Navigation Conference and technology and applications exhibition will be held at the Xi’an Qujiang International Conference Center on May 13, 14, and 15, 2015 in Xi’an, China.

Registration information can be found on the conference website. The deadline for abstracts has passed.

This year, conference topics include:

By Inside GNSS

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IFCS/EFTF 2015: IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium and European Frequency and Time Forum

Denver Millennium Bridge at the end of the 16th Street Mall.

The biennial Joint Conference of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium (IFCS) and European Frequency Time Forum (EFTF) will be held at The Colorado Convention Center in Denver, Colorado, USA on April 12 -16, 2015.

The deadline for abstracts is January 9, 2015. Online submission is open.

Among the sessions for the IFCS/EFTF working group, Group 5 is of particular interest to readers of Inside GNSS. It covers:

By Inside GNSS

October 1, 2014

VectorNav Introduces Dual-Antenna GPS/Inertial MEMS Unit

VectorNav VN-300 GPS/MEMS IMU

VectorNav Technologies, now based in Dallas, Texas, offers the VN-30, a miniature dual GPS-aided inertial navigation system that combines MEMS inertial sensors, two high-sensitivity GPS receivers, and an onboard extended Kalman filter algorithms to provide estimates of position, velocity, and orientation for industrial applications.

By Inside GNSS

September 30, 2014

India Space Officials Release IRNSS ICD

IRNSS-1B satellite in clean room. ISRO photo

A signal-in-space (SIS) interface control document (ICD) for the standard positioning service (SPS) of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) is available for download from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) website.

By Inside GNSS

GNSS Hotspots | September 2014

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. STOP THE CAR!
Las Vegas, Nevada USA

By Inside GNSS

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September 27, 2014

A Learning Experience

My favorite bumper sticker this month: “Oh, no! Not another learning experience!”

After 20 years of putting together a European GNSS program, disappointment over the skewed launch of the first fully operational Galileo satellites is palpable and widely felt. For end users, it is uniformly bad news, and no system provider that sincerely wants to achieve interoperability and robustness in a system of GNSS systems can relish the European program’s current difficulties.

By Inside GNSS

September 26, 2014

FAA Begins Opening Airspace to Unmanned Aircraft as NextGen, ADS-B Draw Fresh Scrutiny

Aviation officials Thursday (September 25, 2014) for the first time approved the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial filming in the United States, opening the door to what is expected to be a slow-building gold rush to the skies.

Six companies received exemptions from the existing rules, which generally ban the commercial use of unmanned aerial systems or UAS. The exemptions were granted to RC Pro Productions Consulting LLC dba Vortex Aerial, Aerial MOB LLC, Astraeus Aeria, HeliVideo Productions LLC, Pictorvision Inc., and Snaproll Media LLC.

By Inside GNSS

September 24, 2014

OCX Program Restructured, Delayed Again

Editor’s Note: An exclusive interview with Gen. Hyten is available here with more details.

Details are emerging about another restructuring of the contract for the new GPS ground system, a deal that pushes completion of the project back another two years and recasts the remaining work to fit within the Air Force’s strained financial profile.

By Dee Ann Divis

GNSS & Geodesy

Gerald Mader, National Geodetic Survey

In August, a group of scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that the severe drought gripping the western United States in recent years is causing a “uplift” in the western United States.

About the same time, governmental agencies were reporting widespread cases of land subsidence in California’s central San Joaquin Valley caused by overpumping of water from wells there.

By Inside GNSS

Kingfisher

Eugenia Acosta, an intern with Clearpath Robotics, unloads a Kingfisher unmanned vessel in preparation for a mission (top photo), the Kingfisher components and controller (bottom photo).

“Our products are robotic research platforms,” says Clearpath’s Meghan Hennessey. “These can be configured and programmed so that our customers can explore their particular areas of interest without all the cost and troubleshooting involved in actually building robots themselves.”

Hennessey says Clearpath platforms — which include the all-terrain Husky, the larger, tractor-like Grizzly and the waterborne Kingfisher — can be thought of as project kits.

By Inside GNSS