Chinese officials at the Toulouse Space Show have announced plans to put an Asia-wide satellite positioning system in place by 2010 to work alongside the US GPS and European Galileo programmes.
The Beidou/Compass system already has four satellites in position. It will be free to use, but will include an encrypted channel for “authorised” users.
Read More…

go to permalink....

With EU approval for a new bidding process, Europe’s much-touted — and much delayed — Galileo, a Brussels-controlled competitor to the US’s GPS system, looks set for orbit. One satellite is being launched this weekend and the system is expected to go online by 2013. more…

The GPS Revolution: How Pocket Positioning Will Change Daily Life

go to permalink....

Russia successfully launched a rocket on Tuesday carrying the last three satellites to complete a navigation system to rival America’s GPS.
The military-run GLONASS mapping system works over most of Russia and is expected to cover the globe by the end of 2009, once all its 24 navigational satellites are operating.
Read More…

go to permalink....

“The next-generation GPS III system is expected to have about 500 times the transmitter power of the current system, multiplying its resistance to jamming,” said the defense analysis website Globalsecurity.org.
“GPS III will have second and third frequencies to contain civilian signal, more robust signal transmissions, and provide real-time unaugmented one-meter accuracy” to locate objects on [...]

go to permalink....

An overpriced piece of pie in the sky
Times Online, UK - 6 hours ago
It arose out of a loose conviction among some EU countries that they would prefer not to rely on the GPS – devised for the US military, still its primary …
Galileo tugs on public purse strings Register
Galileo funding a step closer Computing
all 36 news [...]

go to permalink....

Europe’s attempt to create its own satellite navigation system, known as Galileo, has fallen on hard times. Over the past year, the European Union (EU) has been forced to abandon the idea of managing Galileo as a public-private partnership, in the process incurring a nearly €2.5 billion ($3.5 billion) debt. In addition, one-time partners China [...]

go to permalink....

The Pentagon says it no longer needs to hamper signals from the Global Positioning System network in times of crisis, due to advancements in those systems.
The next generation of GPS satellites won’t carry the capability to degrade the commercial GPS signal in favor of military uses, Pentagon spokesman Major Patrick Ryan told Reuters.
Current satellites allow [...]

go to permalink....

The European Union and the U.S. Thursday announced a breakthrough in their efforts to make Galileo and GPS (global positioning system), their respective satellite navigation systems, interoperable.
GPS has had 30 satellites orbiting around Earth for many years, providing civilian services such as car navigation to people across the world. The system is in the process [...]

go to permalink....

Here’s how to use geotagging to add location data to your image files.
The available solutions range from amazingly elegant to somewhat less elegant. Take Red Hen’s Blue2Can, for example. In my experience, there’s no better geotagging solution.
Blue2Can is a thumb-sized gadget that plugs into a small port on the front of several Nikon digital SLRs, [...]

go to permalink....

NAVIGATING devices using Russian satellites will appear in the shops this year as the first alternative to the widely used GPS network of the United States, officials said overnight.
The Russian devices, which will also receive signals from the GPS network, can be used by planes, ships, armoured vehicles and trains, as well as by individual [...]

go to permalink....

The European Union’s ambitious plan to build its own satellite navigation network to rival the United States’ Global Positioning System has run into a snag, with an industry consortium balking at financially supporting the effort.
Read More…

go to permalink....

SUMMERLAND KEY, Fla. — Europe is not the only focus of efforts to build a rival to GPS, the U.S. constellation of navigation satellites. U.S. control of the world’s only fully functional satellite navigation system is fueling efforts by China, Japan and India to develop alternatives to GPS for regional coverage, and in China’s case [...]

go to permalink....

The operational Galileo satellites will carry two types of clocks - passive hydrogen masers and rubidium atomic frequency standards. Each satellite will be equipped with two hydrogen masers, one of which will be the primary reference for generating the navigation signals, with the other as a cold (non-operating) spare.
Read More…

go to permalink....

MOSCOW, April 30 (UPI) — The Global Navigation Satellite System, or GLONASS, is a radio-based satellite navigation system developed by the Soviet Union and now operated for the Russian government by the national Space Force. It is the Russian counterpart of the United States’ Global Positioning System, or GPS.
GLONASS has both military and civilian applications [...]

go to permalink....

Apparently, the aircraft operates in such a way that it fools the eye/brain motion-detecting apparatus. Because the Phantom’s single rotor blade is located outside its fuselage and because it spins in flight it is “virtually undetectable to the human eye”, according to Vera Tech.
Read More…

go to permalink....

The third signal is meant to enhance civilian capability and is primarily designed for safety-of-life applications, such as aviation, according to Defense Department documents.
A 2001 Transportation Department report warned of the vulnerability of not only civilian transportation systems, particularly airlines, to GPS disruptions but also an increasing number of telecommunications systems including the Internet, [...]

go to permalink....

April 19, 2007 Imagine the United States attempting to fight a war if the Global Positioning System (GPS) were suddenly unavailable. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has obviously thought about it has just awarded a concept development contract to a team of corporations led by Boeing. The objective of the Robust Surface [...]

go to permalink....