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New Satellite Network Will Make It Impossible For a Commercial Airplane To Vanish (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm quotes a report from CBS News: For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
Of course they can still vanish. Turn off the ADS-B transmitter on the aircraft and poof they're gone from the ADS-B receiver on the (Iridium) satellite.
CCTV-like live video feeds from the cockpit and cabin going up to a satellite uplink at all times
You do realize that trans-oceanic planes regularly go places where there is no line-of-sight communications to civilization on the ground? Bandwidth over satellite isn't cheap, especially before this new generation of Iridium. The original Iridium didn't even have a digital mode; access devices had to have their own modem circuitry.
They're certainly not going to spend that much just because one (1) pilot (probably) went psycho and deliberately evaded tracking. There have been other cases of pilots going psycho and crashing the plane, but only one was able to hide the plane too. And if you saw some shit going down, what would you do about it anyhow?
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Yes, yes there are GPS transponders. You query the transponder for its location, and it reports back its GPS location. You can buy such a device right now.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!