Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Teresa Takei, DoD CIO. DoD photoTeri Takai, the Department of Defense’s chief information officer (DoD CIO) announced April 28 that she would be leaving at the end of this week. She is the top advisor to the secretary of defense on navigation and timing plus a host of other subjects including telecommunications, satellite communications, and spectrum issues.
By Inside GNSS
Smartphone tracking results from two smartphones. Yellow dotted line, GPS/GLONASS only; green dotted line, GPS/GLONASS/QZSS/BeiDou. Broadcom Corporation image.Just when they thought it was safe to go back into space . . . .
The Russian GLONASS system, which had appeared to be recovering from a series of organizational and technical problems in recent years, appears to have suffered a systemic disruption during the past 24 hours — beginning just past 1 a.m. Moscow time on April 2 (UTC+4) — 6 p.m. EDT on Tuesday (April 1, 2014).
By Inside GNSS
The U.S. Air Force has awarded Lockheed Martin more than $245 million in contract options to complete production of its seventh and eighth GPS Block III satellites.
The two space vehicles (SVs 07–08) received initial funding under a February 2013 long-lead material contract for the Air Force’s second set of four satellites, GPS III SV 05–08. Similar to this current award announced yesterday (April 1, 2014), the Air Force exercised an option to complete production of SVs 05–06 in December 2013.
By Inside GNSS
Matthias Petschke, European Commission Director of EU Satellite Navigation ProgramsAfter an organizational hiccup led to its cancellation last year, the “reloaded” Munich Satellite Navigation Summit 2014 successfully re-established the event as Europe’s leading forum for GNSS policy dialog.
By Inside GNSS
Don’t be misled by the title. This is not another round of speculation about who should be proclaimed the rightful “Father of GPS.”
By Inside GNSS
With the optimism of college-bound seniors touring the Ivy League, GPS managers have been weighing options to dramatically change the GPS constellation. Now, after studying the costs, considering the benefits, and assessing the funding climate, officials have made the starkly fiscal decision to stick close to home and take a few extra years to finish.
By Dee Ann Divis
Aviation officials are looking at combining data from the Air Force’s planned GPS ground system with services from other monitoring systems — or even relying on other systems entirely — to save money on monitoring the GPS civil signals.
By Inside GNSS
In this article, we will take a look at the various GNSS signals from the perspective of their cost-benefit tradeoffs. First, we’ll look at the evolution of consumer GPS architecture to date — where acquisition speed and sensitivity have been the main drivers of receiver architecture. That architecture has evolved rapidly to take full advantage of the characteristics of the GPS C/A code.
By Inside GNSS
The Air Force is slowing GPS modernization and dropping part of the funding for dual launch of satellites, said defense officials describing the President’s Fiscal Year 2015 (FY15) budget on Wednesday (March 5, 2014).
Air Force Undersecretary Eric Fanning said the Air Force would continue to “honor our investments and obligations” regarding the Global Positioning System but would “reprofile” the GPS III program so that it meets constellation sustainment demands.
By Inside GNSS
Message Type 30: satellite clock data, and corrections for ionospheric and group delay. From IS–GPS–200GIn a Federal Register notice issued today (March 5, 2014), the U.S. Department of Transportation (DoT) invited public comments on U.S. Air Force plans to implement preoperational L2C and L5 civil navigation (CNAV) messages on GPS Block IIR-M and IIF satellites next month.
By Inside GNSS
Modifications in the battery charging protocol of on-orbit GPS satellites are expected to substantially extend the mission life of the spacecraft — a particularly timely development as technical and financial difficulties have raised doubts about keeping the system’s next-generation Block III satellites on schedule for launch readiness.
By Inside GNSS
Lawmakers overseeing the Coast Guard approved language this week that would stop the agency from dismantling facilities needed for eLoran, a proposed system that has gained wide support as a backup in case GPS signals are jammed, blocked, spoofed, or otherwise rendered unusable.
In “markups” or adjustments to language in the FY 2015 Coast Guard authorization bill, a House transportation subcommittee proposes to halt the tearing down of stations in the Coast Guard’s old Loran-C navigation system, which was turned off in 2010.
By Inside GNSS
The fifth GPS Block IIF satellites is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral on February 20 after concerns regarding a 2012 launch anomaly led the Air Force to scrub a planned launch last fall. A Delta IV M+ will carry the spacecraft into orbit.
Additional GPS IIF launches this year are tentatively set for May (Delta IV M+) and July (Atlas V rocket). The last GPS launch (GPS IIF-4) took place on May 13, 2013.
