Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
Mita Kaigisho, site of the ICG-6 meetingICG-6, the sixth meeting of the UN’s Sixth Meeting of the International Committee on GNSS, will take place in Tokyo from September 5-9.
By Inside GNSS
Galileo Test and Development Environment (iFEN photo)The 2011 International Summer School on GNSS will take place July 20 to July 30 in Berchtesgaden, Germany at the GATE facility (Galileo Test and Development Environment).
This year’s theme is Towards a Mutli-Constellation Multi-Frequency GNSS and SBAS.
You may still register online for the waiting list. (Link here for the summer school program. )
By Inside GNSS
ETH Hönggerberg from the south (Hannes Röst photo)The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) sponsors this conference and exhibition on UAVs and geomatics at Campus Science City (Hoenggerberg) in Zurich, Switzerland from September 14 through 16, 2011.
UAV-g 2011 will bring together experts in photogrammetry, surveying, robotics, computer vision, artificial intelligence and aerospace engineering.
Researchers, developers, service and systems providers and users are invited to exhibit and demonstrate their UAV systems in geomatics at at the Birrfeld airfield on Thursday, September 15.
By Inside GNSS
FIGURE 1: System architectureCooperative vehicle safety applications should preferably have two-meter horizontal accuracy and six-meter vertical accuracy, all with a 95-percent availability. The solution must be developed to incorporate lower-cost sensor options, specifically, lower-cost inertial measurement units that can be generally characterized by the gyro drift of 100 degrees per hour and an accelerometer bias force of twice its mass times gravity (two milligals).
By Inside GNSS
A GNSS signal simulator is mainly used to simulate GNSS signals transmitted by navigation satellites, propagated through the Earth’s atmosphere, and received by the receiver antenna. A simulator provides a convenient signal source for the test and validation of receiver function and performance and can also be used in GNSS experiments and studies of signal/data processing algorithms.
By Inside GNSS
This is a 1993 photo of Walter, a German astronaut. He exemplifies the fearless approach to experimentation and the spirit of fun that we are looking for (DLR photo) [Updated June 30] Lucky you – you have three extra days to submit your GNSS application idea to the USA Challenge! The extended deadline is midnight Sunday (Europe) or 3 P.M. (Pacific time) on July 3.
Right now, some team is hard at work in a basement, an office, a dorm room or a lab. They are about to come up with a new, useful and commercially viable idea for a satellite navigation application or location based service.
By Inside GNSS
AstroclockThis colloquium will explore the implications of redefining UTC in astrodynamics, astornomy, geodesy, navigation, remote sensing and related fields.
By Inside GNSS
MD 2011 trajectory (NASA)A schoolbus-sized asteroid grazed the Earth’s atmosphere around 1:00 P.M. (EDT) on June 27. It was 7,600 miles (12,300 km) away at its closest point, at which time it veered away across the South Atlantic Ocean.
It actually passed through the GPS constellation, alerting us to the vulnerability of our vital PNT space vehicles. We can now add asteroids to the the list of GNSS collision risks that already includes other satellites and space debris.
By Inside GNSS
An informal discussion at the 2010 symposium.The Symposium Gyro Technology has changed its name to Inertial Sensors and Systems because of the expanded focus and scientific topics covered at recent conferences. It will take place at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany on September 21 and 21, 2011. The conference will be held in English.
By Inside GNSS
IFEN’s SX-NSR Multi-Channel, Multi-GNSS ReceiverIFEN GmbH has begun shipping the first units of its new second-generation, multi-frequency and multi-GNSS software receiver — the SX-NSR.
The Poing, Germany–based company has also announced that the Galileo Test and Development Environment (GATE) facility that it instrumented and operates near Berchtesgaden for the German Space Agency (DLR) has been certified as a Galileo open-air test laboratory conforming to ISO 17025.
By Inside GNSS
A new report by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) highlights the vulnerability of GPS-dependent critical infrastructures to disruptions caused by solar flares and other space weather events, and sets forth a series of recommendations for building robustness of the GPS service.
Entitled “Satellite Navigation & Space Weather: Understanding the Vulnerability & Building Resilience,” the report is based on a workshop organized by the AMS and held October 13–14, 2010 in Washington, D.C.
By Inside GNSS
Near Hotel Oranje (hotel photo)Spirent engineers will lead a two day training conference on the company’s simulation equipment at Hotel Oranje in Noordwijk, Netherlands on June 21 and 22 2011.
The conference will consist of 11 training sessions followed by 4 hands-on workshops.
Topics include:
By Inside GNSS
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. DON’T BLAME GPS
Humboldt-Tolyabe National Forest, Nevada USA
√ In the Pacific Northwest, in-car navigators often indicate “short cuts” through wilderness mountains—with tragic results. One victim survived 49 days before rescue in May. (Reports blamed GPS – not digital maps or wireless communication.) GPS.GOV straightens out misperceptions, for those who need a guardian angel, but just get a signal.
