Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
[Updated April 29, 2016] A key lawmaker is pressing the Department of Defense (DoD) about its lack of support for a plan it helped devised to protect the US from the consequences of losing GPS service.
By Inside GNSS
The European Satellite Navigation Competition (ESNC) 2016 — this year’s incarnation of the largest international competition for commercial GNSS applications — is once again looking for outstanding ideas and business models. Entries will be accepted from until June 30 at the ESNC website.
Major institutions and regional partners are set to award prizes worth a total of €1 million in more than 25 categories.
By Inside GNSS
Kai Borre, now a professor and senior researcher at Russia’s Samara State Aerospace University, has released a new version of Easy Suite, a collection of Matlab-based scripts and explanatory text that illustrated a variety of common GPS issues.
The first Easy Suite files (easy1–easy10) were published in the periodical GPS Solutions in 2003. Those were augmented by a continuation (easy11–easy18) in Inside GNSS in the years 2009–2010.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has announced plans to launch the final satellite for the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) on April 28.
The IRNSS-1G launch is scheduled for 12:50 p.m. local time from Satish Dhawan Space Center, in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, India, with the navigation payload being carried into space on India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C33).
By Inside GNSS
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced today (April 20, 2016) the successful demonstration of Enhanced Loran (eLoran) for precision timing of financial transactions at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
The demonstration at the NYSE was hosted by Juniper Networks on April 19 and presented to technical representatives from the financial services, energy, and communication sectors.
By Inside GNSS
The European Union (EU) has reached a deal with the British Ministry of Defense resolving a patent issue that could have limited the adoption of signals from the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation constellation.
"The European Commission [EC] has secured access to UK-owned patents related to Galileo signal in space technologies which will allow for their use by chipset and receiver manufacturers on a royalty free basis," according to a joint UL/EC statement supplied by a spokesperson for the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory.
By Inside GNSS
The Pentagon is executing a technology offset strategy designed to recapture some of the military advantage conveyed by America’s innovation edge.
By Inside GNSS
NASA scientists, using GPS data collected from the space agency’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite, have concluded that shifts in geographic polar motion stem from changes in terrestrial water storage (TWS) and the global cryosphere (the frozen water part of the Earth system).
By Inside GNSS
Raytheon Corporation announced today (April 12, 2016) that the company successfully passed the first formal qualification test milestone for the Next Generation GPS Operational Control System (OCX) on March 4.
By Inside GNSS
With little fanfare or prior announcement, China launched another second-generation BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) satellite last week, the 22nd in the nation’s GNSS program.
The satellite launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in the southwestern province of Sichuan on March 29 local time on board a Long March-3A carrier rocket.
An inclined geosynchronous orbit (IGSO) spacecraft designated Beidou-2 IGSO-6, it is expected to operate at an altitude of about 22,000 miles (35,400 kilometers) with an inclination of about 55 degrees.
By Inside GNSS
The Air Force and the Army are looking for companies interested in helping advance a new generation of technology for GPS satellites, ground stations, and receivers.
Both military services have issued requests for information (RFIs), formal announcements through the Federal Business Opportunities website <FBO.gov> to gain insight into current industry capabilities and interest, as part of programs aimed at boosting overall positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) performance and dealing with issues such as jamming and spoofing.
While acknowledging the fury over problems with the new GPS ground system, the head of Air Force Space Command told lawmakers this month that finishing the program with the current contractor was the best way forward.
That contactor, Raytheon, is years behind on the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX), a project whose price tag may now top $4 billion.
By Inside GNSSAnyone who has sat through several iterations of a slide presentation by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a better way to do things.
As speakers flip through an exhaustively vetted series of PowerPoint slides, squeezing out a new bullet point or two from one version to the next six months later, watching paint dry seems like a more productive — and briefer — use of one’s time. The agency sometimes brings a whole new meaning to the concept of geological time.
By Dee Ann Divis
