compassion, collaboration & cooperation iN transistion
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the principal component and the only fully operational element of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) as of August 2018. The history of the GPS program pre-dates the space age. In 1951, Dr. Ivan Getting designed a three-dimensional, position-finding system based on time difference of arrival of radio signals. Shortly after the launch of Sputnik scientists confirmed that Doppler distortion could be used to calculate ephemerides, and, conversely, if a satellites position were known, the position of a receiver on earth could be determined. Within two years of the launch of Sputnik the first of five low-altitude “Transit” satellites for global navigation was launched. In 1967, the first of three “Timation” satellites demonstrated that highly accurate clocks could be carried in space. In parallel with these efforts, the 621B program was developing many of the characteristics of today’s GPS system.
In 1973 these parallel efforts were brought together as a network of U.S. satellites named the NAVSTAR-Global Positioning System, managed by a joint program office headed by then-colonel Dr. Brad Parkinson at the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Organization. This office developed the GPS architecture and initiated the development of the first satellites, the worldwide control segment and ten types of user equipment. Today, it continues to sustain the system as the Global Positioning System Directorate of the Space and Missile Systems Center.
All performance parameters for the system were verified during ground testing by 1978. Ten development satellites were launched successfully between 1978 and 1985 and the initial ground segment that would provide the critical uploads to the satellites was also developed. The initial constellation of 24 operational satellites was deployed between 1989 and 1994 and the system was declared “fullyoperational” in 1995. It has been sustained at that level or higher ever since.
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[IT] was inevitable of course, in the context of the burgeoning
numbers of GNSS systems, having being launched into space, and the ever developing understanding of the potential consequences of these systems, juxtaposed to other parallel technological developments in respect of Global Air Traffic Management, that the USA as the original provider of GPS, should see fit to establish their NextGen Vision for an Integrated Plan.
... which has of course, more than anything else other than the disappearance of MH370, further established an understanding of utilising ALL of the available resources of potential navigation, at our disposal.
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