Gps Satellite facts
While investigating facts about Gps Satellite Orbit and Gps Satellite Map, I found out little known, but curios details like:
Australia’s entire GPS navigation system was found to be off by 4 feet in 2016 when its satellite navigation systems failed to account for tectonic shift—roughly 2.2 inches a year over 2 decades—and threw everything slightly out of position.
how gps satellites work?
Although GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) is free for the world to use, it costs the American taxpayer $2 million per day to operate.
What type of signal is utilized by the gps satellite?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering gps are supported by what satellites. Here are 31 of the best facts about Gps Satellite Tracker and Gps Satellite Navigation I managed to collect.
what gps satellites are overhead?
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All 24 GPS satellites are equipped with atomic clocks capable of getting the time stamp to a location to the 100 billionth of a second
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The elusive "dark matter" in the universe could be detected by looking for time glitches in the existing network of GPS satellites. One researcher is already mining 15 years' worth of GPS timing data for its signature.
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When you use GPS, you're indirectly finding your way with quasars. GPS satellites orient themselves using extremely bright, extremely distant galaxies called quasars. Because of parallax, they're the closest thing there is to a fixed point in space.
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Due to their high speed and position in orbit, GPS satellites must take into account Einstein's theories of general relativity and special relativity, which together determine that a time dilation of +38 microseconds occurs. This needs to be corrected for in order to maintain GPS accuracy.
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In 1992 two civil activists calling themselves “The Harriet Tubman-Sarah Connor Brigade” broke into two clean rooms holding 9 GPS satellites being built for the U.S. Air Force and attacked one of them with an axe over 60 times, causing $2 million in damages
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Due to time-dilation and Einstein's theory of relativity GPS satellites in orbits high above the Earth, where the curvature of spacetime due to the Earth's mass is less than it is at the Earth's surface require the internal clocks to tick at a faster rate than those on the ground.
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When Greece tested four tanks in 2000 before a big arms purchase, the US M1A1 Abrams and British Challenger 2E tanks had trouble with their satellite navigation systems. A French intelligence agency used GPS jammers to help the French Leclerc tank in the competition.
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The U.S. Air Force provides GPS satellite signals to the world for free as it owns, operates, and maintains the satellites used in its operation.
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In the early 2000s, US officials mulled shooting down the European Union's Galileo navigation satellites during a conflict because the frequencies they planned to operate on are more accurate than GPS. Concern was heightened when the Chinese showed interest in the project's capabilities.
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Each satellite in the GPS network transmits a unique identifier code that is 6.1871 × 10^12 bits long (approximately 720 gigabytes). The satellite takes a week to send out the code before it starts over.
Gps Satellite data charts
For your convenience take a look at Gps Satellite figures with stats and charts presented as graphic.
Why do gps satellites need to be in geostationary orbits?
You can easily fact check why 4 satellites needed for gps by examining the linked well-known sources.
That, because of relativity, GPS satellite clocks have to account for an extra 38 microseconds per day. If this wasn't accounted for GPS accuracy would decrease by a factor of 10 km every single day.
Maintaining GPS satellites requires both General AND Special relativity calculations - source
GPS satellites have to account for the theory of relativity, and the fact that they are travelling through time slightly faster than people on the surface of the earth - source
There are only 32 satellites serving the world's GPS needs.
The U.S. Air Force operates and maintains all GPS satellites for the United States - source
When was the first gps satellite launched?
The clocks on GPS satellites must account for time dilation.
How gps satellite orbit?
Time runs faster on GPS satellites due to their distance from Earth's gravity and needs to be adjusted to sync with Earth's slower running time.
There are other global navigation satellite systems besides the US-backed “GPS”: “GLONASS” is Russian, “Galileo” is European and China has “BeiDou”. “GPS” has become the generic trademark name for global navigation satellite systems.
Gravitational time dilation (where both gravity and speed affect the passage of time) is not just part of relativity theory - it is actually something that needs to be corrected for in the clocks of GPS satellites.
Russia has an alternative satellite positioning system called GLONASS, which is already supported by many GPS devices