Slashdot Mirror
New Air Force Satellites Launched To Improve GPS (techcrunch.com)
AmiMoJo writes: This morning, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) successfully launched a Boeing-built satellite into orbit as part of the U.S. Air Force's Global Positioning System (GPS). This $131 million satellite was the final addition to the Air Force's most recent 12-satellite GPS series, known as the Block IIF satellites. The GPS Block IIF satellites were launched to improve the accuracy of GPS. Before the Block IIF series, the accuracy of GPS could be off by 1 meter. With the new Block IIF satellites in place that error is down to 42 centimeters.
What is the best accuracy a civilian can get?
The dateline on the story is actually for Feb. 5. Spacenews.com also reported the launch was on Feb. 5.
So does this also improve the accuracy for common folk owning for example, cellphones or is this only for military applications?
So, one meter just isn't good enough. Just like an engineer too see how much they can get out of a system
The next system shall have a requirement that all measurements shall be to the nearest Millimeter Inch
Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, it really is 42 after all.
"Six by nine. Forty two."
"That's it. That's all there is."
"I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"
-Douglas Adams
Do new satellites drop into the existing network but with improved accuracy? Or will you need an updated device to take advantage of it?
Nope, no sig
Recalculating. Make a U-turn. Recalculating. Recalculating.
Now you can be tracked within 42 centimeters of your actual location.
Before someone would have to go to the spot and take a second to look around for you.
while we do nothing for the starving children.
...to put ordinance on Putin's breakfast table, or the turban on the ayatola's head!
What are they planning, drones with sniper rifles?
Poison tipped darts. Better we have them than the enemy!
New GPS satellites also carry a COSPAS SARSAT package which has two purposes
1. It detects existing digital satellite beacons, but since GPS birds fly over the whole planet constantly and pretty fast, it reduces the time from when you activate the beacon until your message is processed by a ground station. When rescue is life-saving, minutes count.
2. It is ready for future beacons that will have a "back channel" so that after you activate the beacon you can receive a message e.g. "Helicopter dispatched. Move to open ground if possible to effect rescue" or "Storm too powerful. Rescue abandoned. Stay warm, we'll try again at dawn".
COSPAS SARSAT (basically "Search and Rescue* satellite" in both English and Russian) is the global distress system, today it uses Geostationary comms satellites and fast low weather satellites to receive distress signals. The Geo sats can't tell where you are while the LEO ones are often not overhead when you most need them so it can take up to an hour for them to even see you. GPS sats are best of both world, there are so many you'll always get seen and they're moving pretty quickly so they can figure out where you are even if you don't know.
* Although actually it's just Rescue these days, the whole point of using the satellites is to stop searching mountains and oceans and just go straight to where the distress beacon is and rescue people immediately. The oldest analogue beacons had a multi-mile search radius, so it was better than nothing but you did need to search, digital beacons are usually putting rescuers within a hundred metres of the target and sometimes literally right on top of them.
I remember when SA was on, and there were plenty of ways to improve your accuracy, only that back then it wasn't instantaneous and involved post-processing (which we used to do to everything). So ya if you were out in the field walking along with your GPS, it could be out by a lot... However if you stood in one place for a few minutes, collected a few hundred points and then averaged them out statistically after the fact, you could get very accurate results. If you really wanted even better accuracy there used to be a ton of "base stations" which I guess are likely antiquated now, which where in known locations that transmitted their locations, which you could also adjust your values to to achieve even greater accuracy... So there were plenty of ways around SA, just not really at the time of collection. However given today's technology, all that "post-processing" could probably be done on the fly if you really needed to, provided things like base stations still existed, and you didn't need to move around a whole lot at the same time. I used some pretty cheap devices back in the day, that with proper usage could give perfectly acceptable result if you know what you are doing. As I recall, a bigger threat back then was that every device wanted to use it's own proprietary standards, codes, and interface to force you to buy their overpriced (and clunky poorly designed I might add) software to use your own data (Remember Kodak digital cameras? Same Idea.) which was a huge PITA, requiring either to pony up for the software or reverse engineering, or finding tools that other had made (this was before Google)... Of course it there were some pretty collaborative GIS communities at the time .
Also as you say, the US doesn't exactly have a monopoly on the tech anymore, and some devices are capable of receiving a variety of signals.
Not everything the military uses if solely for killing. There are thousands of uses of in credibly accurate GPS out there. In the near future you might learn what some of those are.
It ended up in a remote fishing village in Iceland, then it drove around Croatia for a couple days. Finally, it was stranded in Death Valley and over-heated.
Sorry. Couldn't resist. See later story.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Google Maps has a feature where, when your battery gets low, it will ask if you want to dim the screen except when coming up to turns. I'd love the option to enable that behavior full time. Just going back to the home screen is a decent second choice, I suppose.
Nope, no sig
42cm is 16.5 inches.
https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=42%20cm%20to%20inches
Actually, run-on errors can bubble up to huge errors with GPS.
It does so regularly when a satellite shits itself, or you lose signal for long enough.
It's similar to "gyro-GPS" where minor errors build up and made it even less accurate with time. (mainly because they are built cheaply, you can get some really great quality ones that last much longer before errors make it worthless)
Amazon drone delivery service.
Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
But I digress. Week old news, isn't news. Maybe a little faster story selection process?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Sorry, but 42cm is about 18 inches (2.5cm to the inch, approximately). So they have doubled the resolution. 42mm would have been something under 2 inches.
Why exactly would you need GPS precision of 42cm to accurately position bombs? just position a MOAB in the general area or if you are really crazy contact a crazy russian and get hold of a Tasr Bomba where required accuracy is within one or two cities of the target
So the US military can be certain they are covering-up a war crime.
The simplest reason is surveying. Automated map-making can now include traffic islands, footpaths and doorways. Increase by another magnitude to include street signs.
Japan has been pioneering this technology. Civilian receivers with extra hardware can get resolution down to 5cm. They are using it for things like automated snow ploughs that can follow the side of the road perfectly. Obviously when the road is solid white you can't use optical tracking. For vehicle navigation they can also tell what lane the car is in, to improve directions given to the driver.
It's also useful for surveys. Sure, you can get centimetre accuracy with current tech, but it takes a long time. With the new Japanese system you get an instant super accurate fix.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Which constellation of satellites are they using?
Can you point to what hardware it is that they are making, it should work in the US or elsewhere, and if it does, then I'm surprised I haven't seen it. I'd order some tomorrow if what you are saying is accurate.
Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Yes. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
I LOL'd, "...the system is controlled using a Xbox 360 video game controller"