The Mobile Computing Geekosphere

43 New CORS Stations

2008-06-24T09:57:00.001-07:00

BET1 (Bethel, Alaska)
BREW (Brewster, Washington)
BRW1 (Barrow, Alaska)
CAMR (Cameron, Louisiana)
CHO5 (Chico, California)
ENG5 (English Turn, Louisiana)
FAI1 (Fairbanks, Alaksa)
FTS6 (Fort Stevens, Oregon)
GASK (Savannah, Georgia)
HRN6 (Hawk Run, Pennsylvania)
KAI2 (Decatur, Illinois)
KYTD (Elizabethtown, Kentucky)
MDR5 (Medora, North Dakota)
MMD1 (Merida, Yucatan)
MMX1 (Mexico City, Distrito Federal)
MPR1 (Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco)
MSD1 (San Jose Del Cabo, Baja California Sur)
MTP1 (Tapachula, Chiapas)
NCCL (Clinton, North Carolina)
NCNW (North Wilkesboro, North Carolina)
NCSP (Spindale, North Carolina)
NCTR (Troy, North Carolina)
OTZ1 (Kotzebue, Alaska)
PLS5 (Polson, Montana)
PLS6 (Polson, Montana)
RPT6 (Robinson Point, Washington)
SCIP (San Clemente Island, California)
SNI1 (San Nicolas Island, California)
SPN5 (Spokane, Washington)
SPN6 (Spokane, Washington)
SUM5 (Summerfield, Texas)
SUM6 (Summerfield, Texas)
TBON (Anchorage, Alaska)
TRAK (Irvine, California)
VAN6 (Vandenberg, California)
VNDP (Vandenberg, California)
VTD7 (Saint Johnsbury, Vermont)
VTRU (Rutland, Vermont)
WHD5 (Whidbey Island, Washington)
WHD6 (Whidbey Island, Washington)
YFB1 (Iqaluit, Nunavut)
YQX1 (Gander, Newfoundland)
YWG1 (Winnipeg, Manitoba)

43 New CORS Stations

2008-06-24T09:57:00.000-07:00

New CORS in KY, MS

2008-04-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

KYTB (Madisonville, KY)
KYTC (Bowling Green, KY)
KYTE (Louisville, KY)
KYTF (Covington, KY)
KYTG (Lexington, KY)
KYTH (Somerset, KY)
KYTI (Flemingsburg, KY)
KYTK (Manchester, KY
KYTL (Pikeville, KY)
MSNA (Natchez, MS)
MSPK (Perkinston, MS)
MSPO (Poplarville, MS)
NCDU (Duck, NC)
NCSL (Shallotte, NC)

New CORS in LA, TN

2008-04-07T12:25:00.001-07:00

HREE NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.
Coordinate information, logfiles and RINEX2 data are now available for the following National CORS sites.
ENG6 (English Turn, LA)
LWES (Luling, LA)
TN25 (Tullahoma, TN)

New CORS stations in LA, TN

2008-03-10T10:32:00.001-07:00

March 6, 2008
THREE NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.
Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data are now available for the following National CORS sites.
ENG6 (English Turn, LA)
LWES (Luling, LA)
TN25 (Tullahoma, TN)

TWENTY-FIVE NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.

2008-03-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

February 20, 2008
Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data are now available for the following National CORS sites.
KYAS (Ashland, KY)
MIDD (Dundee, MI)
MSPC (Picayune, MS)
POT6 (Potato Point, AK)
TN11 (Johnson City, TN)
TN12 (Morristown, TN)
TN13 (Newport, TN)
TN14 (Lafollette, TN)
TN15 (Knoxville, TN)
TN16 (Harriman, TN)
TN22 (Dunlap, TN)
TN23 (Crossville, TN)
TN24 (Cookville, TN)
TN31 (Nashville, TN)
TN32 (Gallatin, TN)
TN33 (Clarksville, TN)
TN34 (Belfast, TN)
TN35 (McEwen, TN)
TN36 (Lawrenceburg, TN)
TN37 (Columbia, TN)
TN41 (McKenzie, TN)
TN42 (Newbern, TN)
TN43 (Bethel Springs, TN0
TN44 (Jackson, TN)
TN45 (Arlington, TN)

Note new CORS in MD, KY,

2007-12-14T12:12:00.000-08:00

December 13, 2007
NINETEEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.
Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the following National CORS sites.
ANP5 (Annapolis, MD) GWN5 (Appleton, WA) GWN6 (Appleton, WA) HAG6 (Hagerstown, MD) KNS5 (Kensington, SC) KNS6 (Kensington, SC) LOU6 (Taylorsville, KY) MCN5 (Macon, GA) MCN6 (Macon, GA) MOR5 (East Moriches, NY) MOR6 (East Moriches, NY) NCG5 (Greensboro, NC) NCG6 (Greensboro, NC) PAPH (Philadelphia, PA) SAV5 (Savannah Beach, GA) SAV6 (Savannah Beach, GA) VAGP (Gloucester Point, VA) WHN5 (Whitney, NE) WHN6 (Whitney, NE)

New GLONASS Launches

2007-12-12T12:16:00.000-08:00

Dec 5, 2007 GPS World
Recently Launched GLONASS Satellites Deemed Healthy
All three GLONASS satellites launched on 26 October 2007 have now been declared operational (set healthy).
This includes GLONASS 718, operating on frequency channel -1 in slot 17.
The next triple-satellite GLONASS launch is scheduled for December 25, 2007.

New US GPS Upgrades Coming

2007-12-03T12:56:00.001-08:00

Military Plans Next-Generation GPS
Discovery Channel, November 28, 2007
The U.S. military is working on super-powerful updates to its GPS satellite navigation technology to
try to trump the rival European Galileo project which just received key funding, experts say.
European Union lawmakers agreed last week on a budget to include 2.4 billion euros ($3.5 billion) for
the stalled Galileo satellite-navigation project, now set to be deployed by 2013, the EU presidency
said.
But in a bid to maintain its economic and military edge in the sector, the United States
has been preparing to wheel out GPS III satellites, the most significant upgrade to its Global
Positioning System since it was first launched in the 1990s. "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.
Satellite navigation systems can allow users on the ground -- from jet pilots to lost motorists -- to
locate any point on Earth. "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 the ground, Globalsecurity said.
Galileo meanwhile envisages its own network of 30 satellites to beam radio signals to receivers
on the ground. Its supporters promise it will give greater accuracy and reliability than the GPS -- a
challenge to the U.S. leaders in the field.
7
"The GPS Block III satellite will provide improved positioning, navigation, and timing services to
military and civil users by improving accuracy, integrity, and resistance to hostile jamming," said
David Madden, commander of the GPS Wing in the U.S. Air Force, in a recent interview. "These new
capabilities will be introduced incrementally in a series of three blocks. The first Block IIIA launch is
scheduled for late 2013," he was quoted as saying, on the specialist GPS website Inside GNSS. The
new U.S. network will eventually consist of 32 satellites.

New CORS station for Mississippi and Alaska

2007-11-26T10:01:00.001-08:00

November 9, 2007
ELEVEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.
Coordinate information, logfiles and RINEX2 data is now available for the following National CORS sites.
CHI5 (Cape Hinchinbrook, AK)
CHI6 (Cape Hinchinbrook, AK)
CME5 (Cape Mendocino, CA)
CME6 (Cape Mendocino, CA)
KST5 (Topeka, KS)
KST6 (Topeka, KS)
KYW5 (Key West, FL)
KYW6 (Key West, FL)
MSB5 (Bobo, MS)
MSB6 (Bobo, MS)
NVCA (Las Vegas, NV)

New GLONASS Launches

2007-10-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

PNT MEDIA ITEMS
www.pnt.gov
October 29, 2007
GLONASS May Fully Cover Russia by Year-end
29 October 2007
FIS (Russia)
MOSCOW-- After the successful launch of a Proton rocket carrier with the next three GLONASS
satellites developed at the Krasnoyarsk Krai-based RPA AM by Reshetnev, the orbital fleet of
Russia's proprietary global navigation system is to be replenished with at least 18 more satellites,
which will be put to orbit by the end of this year.
An unmanned rocket carrying three Glonass navigation satellites took off from the Russia-leased
Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday. The Proton booster rocket blasted off at 11:35
a.m. Moscow time and entered low-Earth orbit eight minutes later, a Space Forces spokesman
said.
Kazakhstan suspended Proton launches in September after a similar booster filled with highly toxic
heptyl fuel plunged into open countryside near the industrial city of Zhezkazgan a few minutes after
takeoff. Russia rents Baikonur, established in the 1950s by Soviet scientists, under a long-term
contract with Kazakhstan.
Russia's Glonass system, which uses Cold War-era military technology, is designed to compete
with the global positioning system, or GPS, and is being jointly developed with India. A total of 9.88
billion rubles ($380 million) was allocated for Glonass from the federal budget in 2007, and 4.7
billion rubles ($181 million) in 2006, RIA-Novosti reported.
A total of 24 satellites are to be in orbit to provide global coverage by the end of 2009, the Federal
Space Agency says. Glonass satellite launches had been put on hold after September's rocket
failure.

New CORS for Alaska, Maryland, Colorado

2007-10-15T09:48:00.000-07:00

October 5, 2007
TEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.
Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the following National CORS sites.

BAY5 (Cold Bay, AK)
BAY6 (Cold Bay, AK)
KEN5 (Kenai, AK)
KEN6 (Kenai, AK)
LEV5 (Level Island, AK)
LEV6 (Level Island, AK)
MDSI (Solomons Island, MD)
PUB5 (Pueblo, CO)
PUB6 (Pueblo, CO)
PUR6 (Isabella, PR)

Selective Availability Eliminated

2007-09-25T05:57:00.001-07:00

Statement by the Press Secretary
18 September 2007
15:32
Business Wire
WASHINGTON - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Today, the President accepted the recommendation of the Department of Defense to end procurement of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that have the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals. This decision reflects the United States strong commitment to users of GPS that this free global utility can be counted on to support peaceful civil activities around the world.
This degradation capability, known as Selective Availability (SA), will no longer be present in GPS III satellites. Although the United States stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000, this new action will result in the removal of SA capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide.
GPS benefits users around the world in many different ways, including aviation, road, marine and rail navigation, telecommunications, emergency response, resource exploration, mining and construction, financial transactions, and many more. All users, and their governments, have a stake in the future of GPS. The United States promotes international cooperation in the operation of civil global navigation satellite systems and continues to work to build international support for the protection of these signals from intentional interference and disruption.

Delay In System Design Won't Hold Up GPS III Contract GPS World, September 5, 2007

2007-09-11T06:15:00.000-07:00

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Newsletter/090507.doc
The U.S. Air Force has reportedly delayed a decision to proceed into the preliminary design phase of the GPS III program, but this should not delay the award of the contract to build the GPS Block IIIA satellites, according to informed sources.
Delays in the program have worried defense and aerospace contractors in the past. GPS III comprises an update and modernization of the GPS satellite constellation first mandated in 2000. The Air Force's GPS Wing issued a request for proposal for the development and production of the first eight GPS III satellites earlier this summer; both Lockheed-Martin and Boeing responded, submitting their proposals last week.
The Air Force has said it plans to issue the contract for these first eight satellites, dubbed Block IIIA, later this year, with a planned launch of the first craft in 2013. Eight GPS IIIB and 16 GPS IIIC satellites are planned for later increments, with each increment including more capabilities based on technical maturity.
When fully deployed, the GPS III constellation will enable a cross-link command-and-control architecture, allowing the entire GPS constellation to be updated from a single ground station instead of waiting for each satellite to orbit in view of a ground antenna, as well as a new spot beam capability for enhanced M-Code coverage and increased resistance to hostile jamming, according to the Air Force.
The Air Force is also in the process of updating its GPS ground control system this month. It will be bringing a system online built around a modern server-based architecture, replacing the mainframe system that has been in use since the 1970s.

MAJOR UPGRADE OF THE GPS CONTROL SEGMENT PLANNED

2007-08-03T12:58:00.000-07:00

August 01, 2007
MAJOR UPGRADE OF THE GPS CONTROL SEGMENT PLANNED
The US Air Force has announced that a major upgrade is planned for the GPS control segment (referred to as the Architecture Evolution Plan, or AEP). AEP will swap out the entire master control station, which uses a 1970s-era legacy system, to a modern design based on current technology. Among other things, this change is required in order to implement new capabilities, such as the next generation of IIF satellites.
The AEP change is scheduled to occur during the second week of September, over a period of 4-6 days. The transition will phase in a few satellites at a time and will be completely reversible if anything goes wrong. Before it begins, the old and new ground control systems will be synchronized to the millimeter level so that the most demanding users will experience a seamless change.
The civil community has been asked to disseminate the word about the upcoming change as widely as possible. Should any anomalies be detected during the transition period, users should follow the normal notification procedures via the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center (www.navcen.uscg.gov).

WAAS System Updates

2007-08-03T12:55:00.001-07:00

http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gnss/waas/news/

Garmin Opens Code for Developers

2007-07-11T06:32:00.000-07:00

Garmin Embraces Third-Party Development
May 29, 2007
GPS World
GPS technology giant Garmin is opening its technology to third-party developers.
Today the company took the wraps off the Garmin Developer Web site for software developers and content providers who want to make their Web sites, applications and data content compatible with Garmin navigation systems. The Garmin Developer site provides both free and licensed Garmin resources and a library of application programming interfaces (APIs), toolkits and Web services offering six core products: Garmin Communicator Plugin, MotionBasedWeb Services, Content Toolkit, Garmin PeerPoint Messaging System, Garmin LBS Toolkit and Fleet Management Interface.
"Until recently, third-party Web sites have been unable to communicate easily with Garmin devices," stated Charles Morse, Garmin's director of mobile and PND marketing. "We are making it easier for third-party content providers to leverage the huge community of Garmin devices by providing tools that will allow them to communicate directly with Garmin systems. This will create new markets for the programmers' content and services, while generating a grassroots movement that will spread Garmin's name and technology to consumers through third-party Web sites and content distribution channels."
The Garmin Communicator Plugin API is a browser plugin and JavaScript support code that allows developers to transfer location data such as waypoints, track logs, maps and points of interest (POI) to and from a Web site and Garmin device. This will simplify loading location data to a Garmin GPS unit, according to the company.
For example, on MotionBased.com, customers can quickly upload their activities in the form of track logs from their GPS devices. The cross-browser, and soon the cross-platform plugin, provide a consistent experience for MotionBased customers. Geocaching.com also integrates the plugin so that users can easily transfer selected geocache coordinates to their Garmin devices by clicking a new Garmin icon on the Geocaching.com site.
Also available in Garmin Developer is the Content Toolkit, which lets developers compile secure POIs for Garmin GPS devices. Developers can then market this content to customers of Garmin products, creating an entirely new system of content, devices and customers, Garmin says. It expects future versions of the Content Toolkit to include routes and travel guide information.
With the PeerPoint Messaging System, developers can utilize Garmin's location message format and send precise latitude and longitude information to phones running the Garmin Mobile XT application. Garmin anticipates that this published SMS interface will be sought after by location-based Web sites, fleet management systems, sales management applications and other applications that need to integrate remote destination sending and navigation. The individual who receives the location message will be able to save, view or route directly to the specified location with Garmin's turn-by-turn directions.
Developers can also use the Garmin Location-Based Services (LBS) Toolkit to add location-based services to any Java-based mobile phone application. The LBS Toolkit incorporates Garmin navigation API, local search, real-time content delivery services and mobile advertising delivery services into one platform. This service was originally launched in late-2006 and several third parties have already taken advantage of the capability.
Also available for smartphones, Garmin Mobile Smartphone provides mobile applications running on Windows Mobile or Palm OS devices with access to GPS information, interactive maps and intelligent routing including live traffic conditions. With these tools, developers can easily create LBS solutions for a wide range of Palm OS and Windows Mobile devices that are often already in use by enterprise customers, according to Garmin.
The Garmin Fleet Management Interface enables fleet tracking, messaging, dispatch and navigation directly on Garmin's portable navigation devices, such as the StreetPilot, Nuvi and Zumo series. Utilizing third-party sensor and communication devices, companies can track GPS-based information like vehicle location, speed and direction of travel, distance traveled, and elapsed time, as well as fuel status, idle times, number of stops, cargo door access, cargo temperature, and battery and thermostat levels. The Fleet Management Interface also enables direct-to-driver communication via text messaging, as well as instant re-routing with new-destination message prompts, the company says.
Garmin is also announcing the MotionBased Web Services API, which gives developers access to the same GPS content that MotionBased.com customers enjoy. This new service will enable third-party Web sites to store, manipulate and display Garmin GPS data with little or no development. The API will be available for testing in the summer of 2007 and will complement the Communicator Plugin API.

New Vista OS update for Gramin Mapsource TOPO

2007-07-05T08:32:00.000-07:00

Must have admin rights to install http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=209

Future State of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS)

2007-06-26T06:37:00.000-07:00

Expert Advice -- GNSS in the Year 2017 http://sidt.gpsworld.com/gpssidt/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=421287
By: John W. Lavrakas GPS World
What will GNSS service be like 10 years from now? Such a fascinating question, especially for those who have over recent years witnessed the explosion of GPS capabilities and applications!
For more than a decade, GPS has enriched our lives, bringing vast and unexpected improvements in transportation, communications, military effectiveness, scientific research, geographic data collection, business applications, and recreation.
Nonetheless, further steps are being taken to improve satellite navigation. GPS is being modernized to offer new signals and codes. The European Union's Galileo program is poised to introduce its new satellite navigation system by the year 2012, offering five levels of service. The Russian Federation is committed to updating GLONASS with new M- and K-class satellites offering additional capabilities for civil users. Even China has announced plans to offer a worldwide satellite navigation service, called Beidou Compass.
Billions of dollars, euros, and rubles are being spent on these initiatives, with three, perhaps four, Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) planned to be fielded in the next 10 years. How likely is it that all these systems will be fielded? What will service really be like in the year 2017? Let me try and look into the future to answer this question. I will consider three possible scenarios: a best-case scenario in which all schedules are met; a worst-case scenario in which no schedules are met; and a reasonable scenario, somewhere between the two, in which each program advances under typical rates of progress.
Best Case: Everyone Meets Their Dates
Under this best-case scenario, by 2017 GPS Block IIRM and Block IIF satellites have all been launched. The GPS Block III program is in the middle of deployment and is four years away from completion. Galileo has been operational for five years and GLONASS is fully operational. Let's take a look at each system individually and then at the total GNSS picture collectively.
GPS. Eight Block IIRM satellites will be deployed by 2008. Twelve Block IIF satellites will be deployed between 2008 and 2016. In addition to the L2C (dual-frequency) and M-code signals, these satellites provide the L5 safety-of-life (SOL) signal, necessary for aviation and other safety-of-life operations.
Block III satellites will be deployed between 2013 and 2021. These satellites have crosslink communication, resulting in near zero age of data and integrity monitoring/reporting capability. Block III satellites are required for dual-frequency full operational capability (FOC) and safety-of-life capability because only 20 Block II-class satellites with L2C will be purchased, and only 12 of those will have L5.
By following through on this schedule, the U.S. government launches on capability, without regard to the performance of existing satellites. Thus, if existing satellites are performing according to their specifications, and a new satellite with added capability is available, the new satellite will be launched. The net result is far more satellites on orbit than the minimum required to meet today's service commitments \u2014 in fact, more satellites than permitted under the current specified maximum of 32 signals. This scenario therefore assumes the control segment has been upgraded to accommodate the extra signals being broadcast.
To sum up, the GPS system has 35 satellites, all providing L1, M-code, and L2C signals. The L5 (safety-of-life signal) is available on 27 satellites, with full operational capability. Near zero age of data is available on 15 satellites due to crosslink communication on the Block IIIs.
Galileo. Thirty operational satellites are launched by 2012. In this best-case scenario, Galileo provides full operational capability with open service, safety-of-life, commercial service, and public regulated service on all 30 satellites.
GLONASS. GLONASS launches 24 K satellites by 2017. All 24 are equipped with L1, L2 (dual-frequency), and L3 (an L5 safety-of-life equivalent).
Awash in Signals. Under this best-case scenario, what kind of service does the world have in satellite navigation in 2017?
GNSS users employing hybrid technology are awash in quality signals, with 89 satellites on orbit (65 from GPS and Galileo alone). More than 25 satellites are in view at any one time (20-plus from GPS and Galileo alone). Aviation users, while not having a fully operational safety-of-life service, are able to operate dual frequency worldwide in test mode. Operational use of GNSS for landing is probably only a few years away.
GPS provides three signals at no cost to users. Half of the GPS III satellites have zero age of data, keeping range errors down. Integrity, while not completely assured without augmentation, is available on 15 of the satellites, giving a big boost to users worldwide.
Galileo is offering its full service on all 30 satellites. GLONASS users have the full 24-satellite service.
What I've just considered is the good news scenario, and what good news it is! Now, I'd like to look at a worst-case scenario.
Worst Case: Nobody Meets Their Dates
Under this scenario, GPS III is never funded. Galileo and GLONASS proceed with development but experience technical difficulties. For example I assume that each of the programs has had a launch failure (this is a worst case scenario, remember?). The GPS Block IIF program moves forward, but is not completed until 2018. Although delayed, Galileo is largely able to complete its constellation by 2017. GLONASS also experiences delays.
GPS. In this scenario, GPS Block III is never completely funded and no satellites are launched. The GPS Block IIF program is delayed from the 2008-2016 schedule to a 2010-2018 schedule. This includes a launch vehicle failure resulting in a one-year slip in new launches.
There are no more Block II/IIA satellites in service. Assuming Block IIRs have a 50 percent mortality rate, by the year 2017, only six remain. Eight Block IIRM satellites are completed and launched. Twelve Block IIF satellites are purchased, but only eight are launched by 2017 due to launch failure.
Under this scenario, L1 is available on all 22 satellites, the M-code and L2C signals are available on 16 satellites; and L5 is available on eight satellites.
Galileo. In this scenario, Galileo gets under way, but at a much slower pace. There have been problems in funding the initial program, and several years have been lost getting all the participants on board for the development of the operational phase. A launch failure has further delayed completion. For this scenario, it is assumed that five satellites are launched at a time.
Because of funding and technical issues, only a partial constellation has been launched. The first satellites were launched in 2009, followed by a one-year checkout, then a launch failure resulting in the loss of five satellites and delay of one year.
The original plan was 30 satellites launched in three years. In this scenario, 25 satellites are launched over six years, with the first launch occurring in 2009. Initial operational capabilities (IOC) provide open service, safety-of-life, and commercial service on all 25 satellites, but public regulated service isn't defined early enough to be incorporated into the first 10 satellites. It was only added to later satellites, for a total of 15.
GLONASS. Under this scenario, the constellation is sustained at lower levels due to inadequate funding and technical and programmatic difficulties. Launches continue at a rate of one per year with three satellites per launch. A launch failure further compounds deployment difficulties. GLONASS M satellite production ends when the K satellites become available in 2010.
Under this scenario, all original GLONASS satellites have died. All GLONASS M satellites have been launched, and three remain operational. Eighteen GLONASS K satellites have been launched starting in 2010, with a one-year delay because of launch failure.
All 21 satellites provide the L1 and L2 (dual-frequency) signals. The L3 safety-of-life signal is available on 18 satellites.
Hybrid Users Win. Under this worst-case scenario, in 2017 the world has a seriously degraded GPS service, with only 22 satellites on orbit. GPS-only users regularly have dilution of precision (DOP) holes lasting for long periods of time worldwide. Even though performance standards are being met, users are dropping GPS as their preferred system.
Galileo is offering its full service on a short constellation of 25 satellites. Like GPS, its service isn't quite complete, but service is adequate for most applications.
GLONASS users have dual-frequency service at the IOC level with 21 operational satellites on orbit.
Despite the shortcomings with individual systems, the GNSS users employing hybrid technology have more than enough quality signals, with 68 satellites on orbit (47 for GPS and Galileo alone) and more than 20 satellites in view at any one time (more than 15 satellites for GPS and Galileo alone).
Final Case: A Reasonable Outcome
I now consider a scenario that represents a reasonable outcome from today's planning. The schedule has been adjusted to reflect typical changes based on historical precedent.
For example, the U.S. government has delayed launches of the Block IIRM satellites from its original schedule, in part because the existing constellation continues to meet service goals and in part to save money. The U.S. government has been reluctant to turn off useful satellites even if the satellites are past their design life and have aging components, single points of failure, and reduced performance. This concept of launching only to replenish failed satellites is called "launch on need," which contrasts with the "launch on capability" strategy employed in the best-case scenario, and it forms the underlying launch strategy used in this scenario. In general, the government's approach is to sustain existing capability, not launch to support new capability.
Under this scenario, Galileo has been up since 2015 (10 years after launch of GIOVE-A). It has been only two years since full operational capability. GLONASS has met its goal of full operational capability for dual-frequency service while full operational capability on safety-of-life service is still years away.
GPS. GPS follows through on commitments to complete the Block IIRM and Block IIF programs and to develop the Block III program, but deployment takes longer than originally envisioned. Six of the remain-ing Block IIR satellites are still in orbit. Existing Block II/IIA satellites have been removed from service, having all died off.
All eight Block IIRM and 12 Block IIF satellites have been launched.
One launch vehicle failure results in a one-year slip in the new GPS III launches, an assumption made because the GPS Block III program is using a new class-of-launch vehicle different from those employed in the Block II launches. GPS III has been funded, but is delayed because the current constellation is meeting commitments. Two GPS III satellites have been launched by 2017.
The L1 signal is available on all 28 satellites, while 22 of them have the M-code and L2C dual-frequency signals. The L5 safety-of-life signal is available on 14 satellites.
Galileo. Galileo moves forward, but at a slower pace than originally planned. There have been problems in funding the initial program, and several years have been lost getting all participants on board for development of the operational phase.
A full constellation is up, but the constellation was late because of funding and technical issues. The first satellites were launched in 2009, followed by a one-year checkout. Remember, the original plan was 30 satellites launched in three years. In this scenario, 30 satellites are launched over six years, starting in 2009 and completed in 2014.
As in the best-case scenario, Galileo provides full operational capability with open service, safety-of-life, commercial service, and public regulated service on all 30 satellites.
GLONASS. The constellation is complete, but not all improvements have been implemented. All original GLONASS (pre-GLONASS M) satellites have died. All GLONASS M satellites have been launched and 12 remain operational. Twelve GLONASS K satellites have been launched to sustain the constellation, starting in 2011, at a rate of two satellites per year by 2017.
The 24-satellite constellation consists of 12 GLONASS M satellites and 12 GLONASS K satellites. The L1 and L2 (dual-frequency) signals are available on all 24 satellites, and 12 satellites provide the L3 safety-of-life signal.
Expected Service. Under this reasonable scenario, what kind of service can we expect the world to have?
GPS provides service somewhat better than in 2007. Dual frequency (L2C) has initial operational capability, but full operational capability for both L2C and L5 (safety-of-life) is lacking. This situation will continue at least three more years as the U.S. government waits for enough Block IIR satellites to die off, creating room for replenishment with Block IIIs. Integrity is still years away with only two Block III satellites launched.
On the other hand, Galileo is offering its full service on all 30 satellites. GLONASS users have the full 24-satellite service with dual frequency on all satellites. The third civil frequency is available on only 12 satellites, and it will be years before this service is offered.
Galileo service is complete, offering three frequencies of service and guaranteed integrity, while GPS offers at best two frequencies. Since the standalone GPS user experiences a service only slightly better the service provided in 2007, and below the service levels of Galileo, most GNSS users by now have migrated to Galileo only, or hybrid GPS/Galileo technology.
The hybrid GNSS user is happy, of course, having access to 82 satellites on orbit (58 for GPS and Galileo alone) and more than 25 satellites in view at any one time (more than 15 for GPS and Galileo alone). Aviation users are relying on Galileo for dual-frequency operation, as well as using GPS receivers for single-frequency operation when augmented by the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).
GPS Eclipsed
Under this reasonable scenario, we have a most unexpected result, namely the GPS service has been eclipsed by both Galileo and GLONASS. How could this happen?
I see several reasons for this. In part, this has occurred because GPS satellites last so long. Historically their life spans are far greater than the design life of the satellite, and longer than the satellite life span of GLONASS. With the "launch on need" strategy employed by the U.S. government, however, it was only a matter of time before competitive services moved ahead of GPS. Unlike GPS, the two programs Galileo and GLONASS have essentially no service in 2007. They are building from scratch, and must move as quickly as possible to implement their service. This is not quite truly the case for GLONASS, since it has more than a dozen satellites in orbit and a complete ground control and monitoring capability in place. But even GLONASS has much work to do to launch a full set of modernized spacecraft to replace most of the first-generation satellites now in its fleet.
Under this reasonable-outcome scenario, three systems now provide various levels of service, which used to be provided by just one system. What, then, is the effect on users?
For some, there is little change in 2017. For others, they are beginning to adjust the source of their satellite navigation service. Users in surveying, marine navigation, agriculture, and precision mining shift to Galileo Open Service to take advantage of the dual frequency.
Recreational users \u2014 boaters, hikers, sports clubs, youth groups, and automobile navigation users \u2014 are content to keep using their GPS receivers, lacking incentive to dispose of them. They have already made their investment and the service is more than adequate for their needs.
European and other national commercial vehicle operations are now using Galileo commercial service.
Commercial transportation, taxis, emergency vehicles, and geographic data collectors are switching to Galileo/GPS hybrids to get better availability of service.
Aviation users are still relying on receiver autonomous integrity monitoring with fault detection and exclusion for en route through non-precision approach, but have expanded to include Galileo as well as GPS operation. U.S. aviators use WAAS for non-precision approach, while European aviators use EGNOS. Commercial aviators rarely if ever use hybrid aviation receivers. These receivers are probably not yet certified by 2017 or, if the units are certified, it will be several years before they appear in significant numbers.
The future for GNSS is quite promising. Table 1 shows that the service provided for the hybrid user in 2017 is always good, regardless of how pessimistic the scenario. Even under the worst-case scenario, there are no fewer than 68 satellites are on orbit, with more than 20 satellites in view. Dual-frequency operation is available. While safety-of-life service may not be fully operational, an initial capability is very much available to users. The addition of the Chinese Beidou system would only further improve service for the hybrid user.
Whichever way each of the three systems advances, in 10 years we will have a rich global capability for positioning, navigation, and timing.
Users will no longer rely on a single system. Instead, they will employ multiple systems to obtain the best service for their needs. Depending on a single system is risky and reduces performance. Having access to a diversity of systems results in improved accuracy and increased availability, reliability, and integrity. As long as systems are compatible, users can obtain the positioning and timing service they need without significant increase in cost or risk.
Under each of the scenarios I've considered, all three satellite navigation systems survive. They are all supported by their respective governments and provide a steady service to their users.
Surprisingly, GPS could lose its place as the dominant satellite navigation service by 2017. It will still be used by millions worldwide, but it will now share the role of providing this most valuable service to users across the globe. Because of this, the GNSS providers would be wise to review their current policy toward satellite navigation. Rather than assuming their service to be a standalone service, at least from a civilian standpoint, they should consider key issues and steps to integrate their service into the larger hybrid GNSS world. Issues to consider include monitoring of foreign GNSS services, performance assessment of hybrid services, and sharing of information (including notification and characterization of detected service anomalies and performance data). Steps to consider would be development of hybrid monitoring capabilities and implementation of information dissemination protocols.
Of course, no one can accurately predict the future. What actually happens will be the result of decisions and actions taken by the organizations that support each of these navigation systems. We can only be grateful for the tremendous resources and commitment each organization is applying to provide these valuable services that benefit all of us. It surely isn't an easy task, but the rewards justify the effort and investment.
JOHN W. LAVRAKAS is president of Advanced Research Corporation, where he provides consulting and research and development services on satellite navigation. He is the current president of the Institute of Navigation. Over his 26-year career, he has provided technical support to GPS initiatives such as Integrity Failure Modes and Effects Analysis, Civil Performance Monitoring, and GPS Operations Center. He has also supported development of the GPS Control Segment, GPS user equipment for military range applications, GPS performance analysis capabilities, and GPS-based commercial asset location systems.
See: http://sidt.gpsworld.com/gpssidt/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=421287

Article on the 2007 NAD83 readjustment by NGS

2007-06-26T06:34:00.000-07:00

At http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Articles/TASReadjust07.pdf

New Trimble PDA/GPS Handheld

2007-05-01T06:42:00.001-07:00

Trimble Introduces the Juno ST Handheld
Trimble today announced the newest addition to its Mapping & Geographic Information System (GIS) product line—the Juno™ ST handheld. A PDA with a built-in GPS receiver, the Juno ST handheld is a low-cost, portable data collection solution that is fully compatible with the entire range of Trimble® Mapping & GIS software. It comes standard with Microsoft® Windows Mobile®version 5.0 software and has WLAN/Bluetooth® for wireless connectivity to office networks, cameras, and mobile phones. The Juno ST handheld also supports TrimPix software that allows you to take photos with a high resolution camera and send them wirelessly to your Juno ST handheld to be added as attributes to features in your GIS.
Weighing in at just 133 g (0.3 lb) and measuring 10.9 cm x 6.0 cm x 1.9 cm (4.3 in x 2.4 in x 0.7 in), the Juno ST handheld is lightweight and compact, and its small form factor make it portable and convenient to use.
And, the Juno ST handheld’s lower price point facilitates mass deployment, allowing a company or organization to equip a greater number of its employees. It is especially practical for use in applications where accuracy may be less important and high productivity is essential. Examples include natural resources organizations and utility companies, and government agencies doing inspections and permitting.
Delivering 2 to 5 meter positioning, real-time or postprocessed, the Juno ST handheld incorporates a high-sensitivity GPS receiver that has been specially designed to maximize yield of positions in hostile environments, such as under forest canopy and up against buildings. For use in a vehicle, an external antenna can be added.
Purpose-built for streamlined data collection, the Juno ST handheld has a 300 MHz processor and 128 MB non-volatile Flash data storage. It also has a Secure Digital (SD) card slot for additional data storage. The removable Li-Ion battery is rechargeable and lasts for up to eight hours.
For more information on the Juno ST handheld, click, click here.To purchase, click here (U.S. only).To find your local Trimble Reseller, click here.

Now Glonass Has Hiccups!

2007-05-01T06:36:00.001-07:00

RUSSIA'S GLONASS SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM RUNS INTO PROBLEMS
27 April 2007
Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies
Yury Zaitsev for RIA Novosti: The Global Navigation Satellite System (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 (GPS).
GLONASS has both military and civilian applications and is a graphic example of how space technology can be put to work back on Earth. In late March, a meeting of the State Council Presidium held in Kaluga, a town southwest of Moscow, discussed the national space program. President Vladimir Putin, who chaired the meeting, said the commissioning of the GLONASS system is a top national priority and expressed hope that the system will start operating this year.
First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, a likely candidate to succeed Putin, said the operational GLONASS cluster will have at least 18 satellites before the year is out and will cover the whole of Russia. Ivanov oversees the development of the GLONASS system together with the Space Force and the Federal Space Agency (Roskosmos).
On April 9, Roskosmos Director Anatoly Perminov told the International Satellite Navigation Forum that Russia planned to launch six revamped spacecraft this year and to bring the number of GLONASS satellites to 24 in 2009. He said the GLONASS system would then be able to cater to users all over the world. Unfortunately, the GLONASS project still faces major problems.
The Russian mission control center said only 12 out of the 19 GLONASS satellites now in orbit are currently operating. Four more satellites now orbiting the Earth may be commissioned in the future, enlarging the GLONASS cluster to 16 spacecraft.
However, only seven of these are revamped Uragan-M satellites, whereas the rest are obsolete spacecraft, whose service life has either expired or will expire soon.
Quite possibly, all old spacecraft may stop functioning by late 2008. In this case Russia will have to launch 17 new satellites by the end of 2009. And working out the required launch schedule would be a mind-boggling task.
Moreover, to launch spacecraft in space is only part of the problem. It takes several months to commission them. Of three spacecraft launched in December 2006, one has not been activated yet. Some satellites were commissioned only eight months after launch.

Nevertheless, in line with the president's instruction, all 24 GLONASS satellites will have to be deployed by 2009. With this aim in view older satellites are sometimes shut off in order to extend their service life, in order to report at the right time that the system is ready for operation. But this does not necessarily mean that the entire system will function without a hitch. It is also unclear whether the GLONASS system can be used on a global scale.
Each of the three GLONASS orbital planes will have eight satellites. The U.S. GPS cluster, which also has 24 spacecraft, plus five stand-by satellites, will eventually increase to 48.
Some elements of the GLONASS cluster, which has no stand-by satellites, are regularly deactivated for maintenance purposes. In fact, the system has not operated at full capacity since 1995 and therefore has not been able to cover the entire world.
One of the 24 satellites flies just above the horizon and so cannot be seen. With its 18 spacecraft GLONASS will only ensure uninterrupted ship and airplane traffic, while other users will have to wait for two hours or more. For this reason, it is unlikely that GLONASS could operate on the GPS-dominated Russian navigation services market in the next five to ten years.
Russian Transport Minister Igor Levitin said only about 1,200 of Russia's 5,000 airliners have navigation equipment, mostly GPS receivers (92%); GLONASS receivers account for the remaining 8%.
Although Sergei Ivanov is in charge of the system's development, President Putin has aptly remarked that no one is directly responsible for the end result and for the system's ground segment. Moreover, Russian enterprises have not yet mastered batch production of user-friendly navigation equipment.
The situation is reminiscent of the COSPAS-SARSAT project, an international satellite-based search and rescue system, established by Canada, France, the United States and the former U.S.S.R. in 1979. The COSPAS-SARSAT cluster was fully deployed in 1995, but production of navigating equipment remained a problem. There are now about 660,000 locator beacons operating in the world, but there are only several hundred Russian planes and helicopters that have them. As before, it sometimes takes months to locate a missing plane in the Siberian taiga.
We must realize that the GLONASS system will not be commissioned before 2010-2011, and that there would be no use for a smaller 18-satellite version.
There are plans to orbit the first Uragan-K satellites, i.e. modified versions of the non-hermetically sealed Express-1000 space platform, in 2009-2010. Each Uragan-K satellite will have three channels, including one for civilian users, which will ensure its dependability and precision of navigation. The new satellite will weigh two times less than its predecessor, the Uragan-M.
This means that the new medium-class Soyuz-2 rockets, rather than the expensive heavy-duty Proton vehicles, will be able to launch two Uragan-Ks at a time from the Plesetsk space center in the Arkhangelsk Region, in northern Russia. In all, there are plans to orbit 27 such satellites that will operate until 2025.
A future, more advanced satellite navigation system will be made up of Uragan-KM spacecraft, whose specifications are currently being worked out. Flight tests will begin in 2015.
Yury Zaitsev is an academic advisor at the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences.
-30-

WAAS Sat status change

2007-04-17T07:10:00.000-07:00

INTELSAT(PanAmSat), Galaxy-15, W133 deg, PRN -135 (48)
PRN-135 will be put back into "Test Mode" for 7 days from 4/16 to 4/23 to test retrofitting of ranging loop code carrier coherency changes developed during PRN-138 testing. Non-aviation users with test mode with corrections capability should not be impacted. Aviation users will automatically revert to using PRN-122. Since PRN-122 is fairly low elevation in NE CONUS, aviation users will have degraded availability in the NE for those days. For real, legal, information, see the official NOTAMS.
PRN-135 was taken out of "Test Mode" and placed in normal mode at 08:00 UTC on 11/9.
PRN-135 will operate for about the first 6 to 9 months as a data link of correction and integrity information only. That is, the UDRE will be set to "not monitored". This will result in it being displayed with a "hollow bar" on some receiver displays.
The ranging control loop for PRN-135 will be running, but the WAAS ground system will not provide UDREs smaller than Not Monitored until the FAA's verification of the integrity analyses for the ranging function have been completed as part of the PRN-138 testing. (Data link only operation allowed the PRN-135 deployment to be accelerated to compensate for the loss of PRN-122 in the North East)

New Alabama CORS stations

2007-04-16T06:18:00.001-07:00

TWELVE NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK
Coordinate information, log files, and RINEX2 data is now available for the following National CORS sites.
AL40 (Alexander City, AL) AL60 (Montgomery, AL) AL90 (Mobile, AL) JCT1 (Junction, TX) MCD5 (Mac Dill AFB, FL) MCD6 (Mac Dill AFB, FL) NBR5 (New Bern, NC) NBR6 (New Bern, NC) NJCM (Middle Township, NJ) NJTP (Piscatasway, NJ) NVPO (Las Vegas, NV) PUR5 (Isabella, PR)

New USFS testing of GPS receivers under canopy

2007-04-12T07:53:00.001-07:00

AT

http://www.fs.fed.us/database/gps/receivers/acc05_12.htm

Very cool unofficial ArcPAD blog

2007-04-12T07:49:00.000-07:00

at

http://arcpadteam.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html

USGS Defines Roles for New Satellite Mission

2007-04-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Technical Announcement
March 29, 2007
Denver Makle
703-648-4732
dmakle@usgs.gov

Scientists and engineers from the Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA are moving forward in planning a successor to the Landsat 7 satellite mission. With the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM) satellite expected to launch in 2011, the two agencies have announced their roles and responsibilities in mission development, subsystems procurement, and on-orbit operations.

NASA and USGS share responsibility for the LDCM. NASA will procure and/or develop the space segment, consisting of the satellite, instrument, and launch services and will also perform on-orbit satellite checkout. The USGS will develop and implement the ground segment, consisting of the ground receiving station network, a satellite operations facility, and archive and image processing facilities. After launch and check-out, NASA will transfer the satellite to the USGS to perform flight operations, image-data capture and archiving, and product dissemination.

The USGS will use NASA procurement services to acquire mission operations software for commanding the satellite and instrument, thus ensuring compatibility with NASA’s space segment procurement. The USGS will competitively procure ground segment resources, including the primary ground receiving station at the USGS EROS Center near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as well as supplemental capabilities to ensure comprehensive and timely global data acquisition. The data-collection planning capability will be modeled after the successful Landsat 7 Long-Term Acquisition Plan to collect global land image data and will be developed through the USGS EROS Technical Support Services Contract. The mission operations facility will be configured at the USGS EROS Center through commercial facility modification contracts. The flight operations team will also be procured competitively, similar to the approach employed for the Landsat 5 and 7 missions.

Data archive and user portal capabilities will be procured competitively, while image processing functionality will be developed through the USGS EROS Technical Support Services Contract. Independent ground systems architecture analysis and integration will be led by the USGS and supported by Federally-Funded Research and Development Center resources. Finally, overall system integration into the existing USGS infrastructure will be ensured through the USGS EROS Technical Support Services Contract.

Further details regarding the USGS LDCM acquisition strategy can be found at http://ldcm.usgs.gov/.

Last IIR-M GPS Satellite Produced

2007-03-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

Lockheed Martin Completes Work On Modernized GPS Satellites
(WebWire) 3/21/2007 10:29:40 PM
Related Topics
• Aerospace/Defense
Last of Eight Block IIR-M Spacecraft Ready to Support Future Launch
KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa., March 21, 2007 -- Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] announced today the delivery of the eighth and final satellite in the modernized Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) production program to the Air Force.
The GPS constellation provides critical situational awareness and precision weapon guidance for the military. The worldwide system also supports a wide range of civil, scientific and commercial functions – from air traffic control to the Internet – with precision location and timing information.
There are currently three IIR-M spacecraft on-orbit, along with 12 original Block IIR satellites within the overall 30-spacecraft GPS constellation. Each satellite in the Block IIR-M series includes a modernized antenna panel that provides increased signal power to receivers on the ground; two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti-jamming capabilities for the military; and a second civil signal that will provide users with an open access signal on a different frequency.
Based on the navigation user range error, which measures GPS accuracy, the Block IIR satellites enable properly equipped users to determine precise time and velocity and worldwide latitude, longitude and altitude to within one meter.
Over 250 employees from Lockheed Martin, navigation payload provider ITT of Clifton, N.J., and representatives from the U.S. Air Force and other government agencies, gathered at Lockheed Martin’s facilities in Valley Forge, Pa., to celebrate the achievement and the overall success of the GPS IIR program.
"This historic milestone is the result of our team’s commitment to superior program execution and dedication to achieving mission success for our customer," said Don DeGryse, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of Navigation Systems. "We take great pride in the outstanding on-orbit performance of these advanced spacecraft and look forward to further enhancing the worldwide constellation with the launch of the remaining IIR-M spacecraft."
Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, Colo., is the prime contractor for the GPS IIR program. The company designed and built 21 IIR spacecraft for the Global Positioning Systems Wing, Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.
The final eight spacecraft, designated Block IIR-M, were modernized to enhance operations and navigation signal performance for military and civilian GPS users around the globe. The company is also responsible for launch and flight operations support of the GPS IIR and IIR-M satellites.
The third GPS IIR-M spacecraft was launched successfully on Nov. 17, 2006 and was declared operational on Dec. 12 by Air Force Space Command’s 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2 SOPS) at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., which manages and operates the GPS constellation for both civil and military users.
The fourth GPS Block IIR-M satellite has been delivered to Cape Canaveral to support a late 2007 launch. Remaining satellites delivered to storage are available for launch when requested by the Air Force for constellation sustainment.
The company is leveraging its proven record of building advanced global positioning system satellites for the next-generation system, known as GPS III. The Lockheed-led GPS III Space Segment team, which includes ITT and General Dynamics, is currently working under a Phase A Concept Development contract, with the Air Force expected to award a multi-billion dollar development contract to a single contractor in late 2007.

Loran and GPS Vunerability

2007-03-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

Loran Gets a Witness
Mar 1, 2007
GPS World
The Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) has joined more than 900 other organizations and individuals in responding to the request for comments on Loran. RTCM comments verbatim:
RTCM's Board of Directors has adopted a position in support of maintaining the Loran-C system, and its modernization to e-Loran standards. Loran provides an important backup to the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), not only for position and navigation purposes, but for timing applications as well. In deciding on this position, RTCM has taken the following into consideration:
GPS/GNSS augmentation: The accuracy of GPS/GNSS systems is improved by the availability of additional satellites. In a combined GPS/Loran receiver, Loran signals can function like an additional satellites, thereby improving positional accuracy. Combined GPS and Loran receivers are currently available, and the accuracy provided by the envisioned e-Loran system will enhance their usefulness.
Vulnerability of signals: The signals from GNSS satellites are very weak at the earth's surface. Although it is difficult, jamming of civil GNSS signals is possible. Loran's stronger signal makes jamming more difficult. The following is from the 2005 Federal Radionavigation Plan:
1.6.2.1 Vulnerability of GPS in the National Transportation Infrastructure
The Final Report of the President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure Protection concluded that GPS services and applications are susceptible to various types of radio frequency interference, and that the effects of these vulnerabilities on civilian transportation applications should be studied in detail.
Shielding is another potential issue. Loran's stronger signal would enable land navigation and tracking systems to continue to operate with a combined GNSS/Loran receiver in some places such as tunnels and areas of dense vegetation, where GNSS reception is shielded.
Vulnerability of satellites: As has been recently demonstrated, satellites may be vulnerable to destruction by a future adversary. Loran stations are land-based, and easier to defend. Should the GNSS system be compromised as the result of a conflict, Loran receiver input to shipboard systems such as the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and Long Range Identification and Tracking (LRIT) System, would enable those systems to continue to function. Both systems are considered essential to maritime security, a concern that would certainly take on added importance in a time of conflict. Recent experiments have shown e-Loran capable of meeting Harbor and Harbor Entrance positioning requirements.
Loran is needed as a reliable backup to GPS for timing purposes. Modern communications systems (e.g. cellular telephone) depend on timing derived from GPS and/or Loran, and would not be able to function without them.
Legacy users: Many recreational boaters and smaller commercial vessels have Loran-C receivers, which provide them with sufficient navigational accuracy for their purposes. Termination of Loran-C service would render their equipment useless and their investment in it would be lost. Many commercial boat operators use both GPS and Loran-C, and consider Loran-C a vital supplement to GPS. They are quite familiar with periods of GPS unavailability, and charter boat operators have to use Loran-C under those conditions to find wrecks, rocks, or reefs for fishing or SCUBA diving.
International compatibility: Loran providers in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East have committed to continuing Loran service. The United States needs to commit to Loran in the interest of a seamless international position, navigation, and timing service.
For the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services,
— R. L. Markle, President
Sprint Nextel Chimes In

Critical Patch for Daylight Savings Time for Windows Mobile Devices (GeoExplorers, Recon, PDAs)

2007-03-08T09:26:00.000-08:00

Find this critical Patch at

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/daylightsaving/default.mspx#followsteps

New OPUS-RS works for Survey GPS files as short as 15 minutes

2007-03-05T13:39:00.000-08:00

from GPS World on-line
Perspectives — February 2007
With OPUS, one person can operate one L1/L2 receiver to bring NSRS-compatible control into a project with a time investment measured in terms of a few man-hours or less.
Feb 26, 2007
By: Eric Gakstatter
OPUS-RS: Rapid Static Processing
This newsletter has a significant international distribution, and I know I just wrote about the US National Geodetic Survey (NGS) a few months ago, but the new OPUS-RS NGS program has international implications. It paints an interesting picture of where things are headed in the geodetic/survey community with respect to Continually Operating Reference Stations (CORS) — not just in the United States, but around the world.
OPUS-RS is a derivative of OPUS (Online Positioning User Service). After 15 months of testing, OPUS-RS was declared operational on January 31, 2007.
A little background: the original OPUS is a free, geodetic-quality, post-processing service for L1/L2 GPS data. It was introduced five years ago by the NGS and is operated/maintain by the NGS. In simple terms, here’s how it works:
• Collect at least 2 hours of L1/L2 GPS data.• Use the NGS OPUS web-based submission form to send your data to them in Receiver Independent Exchange Format (RINEX) format; some manufacturer formats are supported too.• Specify the antenna type.• Specify the antenna height.
Within minutes, the data is processed with respect to three CORS sites (based primarily on distance, site stability and number of observations) and the centimeter-level results are emailed to your inbox in a standard or extended report format. Results are provided in ITRF and NAD83/CORS96 epoch 2002.0 and also in geodetic, State Plan and UTM coordinates, all tied to the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS).
The value of the OPUS/OPUS-RS concept:
Simple to operate. Easy/quick access to the National Spatial Reference System (NSRS).
Low overhead. One person can operate one L1/L2 receiver to bring NSRS-compatible control into a project with a time investment measured in terms of a few man-hours or less.
Robust solution. Multiple baselines used.
The OPUS concept would be much more difficult to implement without the CORS system in place. Briefly, CORS is a network of just more than 1,000 GPS reference stations spread throughout North and Central America. NGS owns very few of these. They are owned/operated by government agencies and private companies who choose to participate in the NGS CORS program and follow the NGS specifications for operating/maintaining a CORS site.
For detailed information on the CORS program, you can visit:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/
For more information on the OPUS program, you can visit:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/OPUS/
That brings us to the newest flavor of OPUS called OPUS-RS (Rapid Static). Whereas OPUS is much like the hours-long static GPS work you may have done in the past, OPUS-RS resembles rapid-fast/static approach you may have used in the past, except it uses publicly available GPS reference stations.
If you recall from above, OPUS requires at least two hours of observation time. OPUS-RS can process data sets with as little as 15 minutes of observation time. Where it differs from the rapid/fast static processing you may have done in the past is that OPUS-RS uses reference stations as far as 200 kilometers away. Given the density of CORS sites in North America, this means you can use the service in most locations in Canada, the United States (including Alaska/Hawaii), Mexico, Central America, Virgin Islands, and several smaller regions.
Although the OPUS-RS user interface appears strikingly similar to OPUS, OPUS-RS uses an entirely new software engine developed by the NGS and contractor Ohio State University. OPUS-RS is the first product using the new software engine, and that is the cornerstone of future NGS products.
If you’ve ever been involved in a static GPS survey campaign and had to manage more than one GPS receiver, you’ll appreciate OPUS-RS as well as its predecessor, OPUS. Without OPUS/OPUS-RS, you would have to setup and operate your own reference station(s) and perform the post-processing yourself.
OPUS-RS uses up to six GPS reference stations up to 200 kilometers away to produce a centimeter-level solution. OPUS-RS is picky about site stability, distance, and number of observations, so it won’t always select the closest reference stations to you. If you choose to select the reference station manually, you can select up to six.
To give OPUS-RS (or OPUS) a run and get comfortable with its performance, you don’t have to own a GPS receiver or even leave your office for that matter. You can download data from the CORS site nearest you and then submit it to OPUS-RS as if you collected it yourself. You can push the OPUS-RS envelop by submitting very short datasets or datasets during various times of the day.
Here are the steps and links if you want to do this yourself.
To download data that you’ll submit to OPUS-RS:
Go to http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS
Click on the CORS coverage map and find a station you want to use. Remember, you will use data from this station to simulate your own that you’ve collected. For this exercise, I downloaded data from the CORV site.
Once you’ve clicked on the name of the station you want to use, look on the left side of the screen and click on Custom Files (UFCORS).
Then select a day/time of the data you want. For Number of Hours of data you wish to receive, select “1”.
In next screen, choose 30 seconds between points and select YES for NGS data sheet.
Then click Submit.
Note that data downloaded from CORS is sent to you in minimum 1-hour blocks. If you want to challenge OPUS-RS with shorter datasets like 15 minutes, you’ll have to use a text editor like Windows Notepad to shorten the data file. The data file is in RINEX format, which is an ASCII format. If you’re in a patient mood, a very useful but non-user-friendly program exists called TEQC that does a good job of manipulating RINEX files a number of different ways. You can download TEQC free of charge at:
http://facility.unavco.org/software/teqc/ teqc.html
I used TEQC to chop up the RINEX data into 15-minute sections that I was interested in processing.
Once you have the data ready to submit to OPUS-RS, you need one more piece of information: the type of antenna. In my case, the antenna used by CORV is an Ashtech 700936E_C. You can find this in the header section at the beginning of the RINEX file.
Now, go to the OPUS-RS web site at:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/OPUS/OPUS-RS.html
You are prompted for your email address, the name of the file you want to send to OPUS-RS, the antenna type, and the antenna height. I left the antenna height at 0.0 because I used the CORV data. If you collected your own data in the field, you’d need to enter the correct antenna height.
Once the form is completed, click on the Submit button and check your email in a few minutes. The email you receive from OPUS-RS will contains geodetic results in the NAD83(CORS96) datum as well as in ITRF00. Also, you’ll receive State Plane Coordinates and UTM Coordinates referenced to the ITRF00 datum. You are also provided the ellipsoid height and ortho height based on GEOID03 and the NAVD88 vertical datum.
I processed two 15-minute datasets per day over a 10-day period from February 1 to February 10, 2007. Based on mission planning software, I choose a 15-minute period in the morning (~9am local time) when the PDOP was low and one in the afternoon when it was higher (~4pm local time).
Here are results from some of the days I processed. The values are in State Plane, Oregon North, meters. These are 15-minute datasets.
CORV = N105971.566, E2277335.373, 107.514 HAE
DATE/START
N
E
Z
dn
de
dz
Feb. 1 9:10amFeb. 1 4:00pm
105971.548105971.546
2277335.3872277335.389
107.455107.498
.018.020
-.014-.016
.059.016
Feb. 2 9:05amFeb. 2 3:50pm
105971.547105971.545
2277335.3882277335.389
107.503107.491
.019.021
-.015-.016
.011.023
Feb. 3 9:00amFeb. 3 3:50pm
105971.546105971.544
2277335.3892277335.390
107.526107.495
.02.022
-.016-.017
-.012.019
Feb. 4 8:55amFeb. 4 3:45pm
105971.545105971.544
2277335.3892277335.389
107.506107.488
.021.022
-.016-.016
.008.026
Feb. 5 8:50amFeb. 5 3:40pm
105971.546105971.545
2277335.3882277335.390
107.529107.500
.02.021
-.015-.017
-.015.014
Feb. 6 8:50amFeb. 6 3:40pm
105971.547105971.542
2277335.3902277335.390
107.515107.493
.019.024
-.017-.017
-.001.021
Feb. 7 8:45amFeb. 7 3:35pm
105971.545105971.543
2277335.3692277335.382
107.545107.511
.021.023
.004-.009
-.031.003
Feb. 8 8:40amFeb. 8 3:30pm
No solution105971.567
—2277336.923
—108.759
—-.001
—-1.55
—-1.245
Feb. 9 8:35amFeb. 9 3:30pm
105971.548105971.537
2277335.3842277335.389
107.437107.5
.018.029
-.011-.016
.077.014
Feb. 10 8:30amFeb. 10 3:25pm
105971.550105971.540
2277335.3872277335.392
107.519107.498
.016.026
-.014-.019
-.005.016
In looking at the data, what’s interesting is the precision of the collected data is pretty tight (with the exception of the Feb. 8 data which is discussed below). At first, I thought I had made an error somewhere in calculating the CORV State Plane coordinates, antenna selection, and so on, because the offset from CORV of each of the solutions was pretty consistent. However, I had the NGS folks check my work and I had done things right. They attributed the offset to error in the published CORV coordinates, seasonal variation of coordinates, and movement not accounted for in the NGS velocity models as CORV (Corvallis, OR) is in a region of considerable tectonic stress.
You’ll notice the difficulty on the Feb. 8 datasets. No solution was possible for the morning dataset even when I extended the dataset to 60 minutes — too many cycle slips. Also, the Feb. 8 afternoon solution had significant errors. It’s important to note that the quality indicators in the OPUS-RS report raised a red flag on these two datasets and also on the Feb. 9 morning dataset where the N and E components were very reasonable but the Up component was a little sloppy.
One item I was paying attention to were instances where the quality indicators were positive, but a poor solution was provided. I didn’t see this so it speaks well, given a limited dataset, of the integrity of the solution. OPUS-RS provides two sets of quality indicators for you to evaluate the position solution.
OPUS-RS also reports the reference stations that were used to determine the solution. There were six with the closest being 42km and the furthest being 187km away. Who would have thought you could obtain cm-level positioning using 15 minutes of data with those sorts of baseline distances?
I could spend a lot more time writing about this because there’s much more, but the great part about it is that you can try OPUS-RS without even leaving your desk. I even went back and processed some datasets I had from a current project. Give it a shot.
About the Author
Eric Gakstatter
About Eric Gakstatter
email: egakstatter@questex.com
See more articles by Eric Gakstatter

Update for Daylight Savings Time for Windows Mobile Devices

2007-03-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

Fix for these devices running Windows mobile or Windows mobile 2003 is found at

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/daylightsaving/default.mspx#followsteps

CORS Landmark

2007-02-14T07:25:00.000-08:00

February 7, 2007
NOAA INSTALLS 1,001st CORS AT KEY WEST TIDE GAUGE
On December 20, 2006, NOAA installed a new high tech Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS), called CHIN, at the Nancy Foster Florida Keys Eco-Discovery Center as part of the International Ocean Observation System (IOOS) program. Station CHIN holds the distinction of becoming the 1,001st station to join the NOAA-managed CORS network. Each CORS is equipped with a receiver that continuously collects radio signals broadcast by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. These signals enable people to determine positional coordinates for a location of interest to them with an accuracy of less than an inch in all three dimensions. Most notably, station CHIN will usher in a new generation of CORS by becoming the first to provide precise positioning data in real time from both the U.S. based GPS satellites and the Russian based GLObal NAvigation Satellite System (GLONASS).
Station CHIN will also be co-located with the tide gauge in Key West to provide crucial data for relating local sea level changes at Key West to the globally-consistent, rigorously-defined International Terrestrial Reference System (ITRS). Installed in 1913, the Key West tide gauge provides one of the longest continuous records of sea level change among all stations contained in NOAA’s National Water Level Observation Network (NWLON). As part of the IOOS program, NOAA will install additional CORS at other NWLON stations to better relate sea level changes around the country to the ITRS. In addition to providing precise positioning data, the CORS network provides data to monitor (1) crustal motion, (2) the distribution of water vapor in the atmosphere, and (3) the distribution of free electrons in the ionosphere. The water-vapor information enables meteorologists to better forecast the amount of precipitation associated with storms, and the free-electron information enables atmospheric scientists to better forecast the impacts of space weather on power grids and telecommunications.
Station CHIN is so named in honor of Ms. Miranda Chin, the recently retired NOAA scientist who in the mid-1980’s pioneered the concept of establishing permanent stations for continuously collecting GPS signals. For more than two decades, Ms. Chin collaborated extensively with foreign, national, state, and local government agencies--as well as with private and academic organizations—to develop the CORS network. More than 185 organizations worldwide cooperate to sponsor and operate the stations that comprise the NOAA-managed CORS network, and the number of CORS partners continues to grow as, currently, more than 150 stations are being added to the CORS network each year. (For more information, see www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/).

China Puts New Navigation Satellite Into Orbit

2007-02-06T06:42:00.000-08:00

The carrier rocket Long March 3-A blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province, Feb. 3, 2007. Photo courtesy XNA.
by Staff Writers
Xichang, China (XNA) Feb 05, 2007
China successfully put a navigation satellite into orbit early Saturday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The carrier rocket, Long March 3-A, blasted off at 0:28 a.m. ( Beijing Time). The satellite separated from the rocket about 24 minutes later. Data from the Xi'an satellite monitoring center showed that the satellite had accurately entered its orbit.
It is China's fourth Beidou (Big Dipper) navigation experimental satellite in orbit. The previous three were sent in space on Oct. 31, 2000, Dec. 21, 2000 and May 25, 2003 respectively.

Experts said the Beidou satellite navigation experimental system is operating well and has played a significant role in cartography, telecommunications, water conservation, transportation, fishery, prospecting, forest fire monitoring and national security.

The fourth Beidou navigation satellite, serving as a backup satellite for the Beidou satellite navigation experimental system, may replace the first Beidou satellite, when necessary, continuing to provide all-weather and all-day navigation and positioning information.

Experts said China is establishing the Compass Navigation Satellite System on the basis of the Beidou satellite navigation experimental system. The compass system will in 2008 fully meet the demand of satellite navigation for clients in China and neighboring regions.

The Compass Navigation Satellite System will gradually extend to be a global satellite navigation and positioning system after network building and experiments, experts said.

The compass system will be mainly used for economic purposes, providing efficient navigation and positioning services in transportation, meteorology, petroleum prospecting, forest fire monitoring, disaster forecast, telecommunications and public security, among others.

China is one of the several countries in the world capable of developing such a system on its own.

The system can help clients know their location at any time and place with accurate longitude, latitude and altitude data.

The satellite and carrier rocket were developed respectively by the China Academy of Space Technology and China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, which are under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

The launch represents the 95th flight of China's Long March series of rockets.

earlier related report
China launches first satellite after satellite-killing missile test
Beijing (AFP) Feb 03 - China launched an experimental navigation satellite into space early Saturday, state press reported, the nation's first space launch since it tested a satellite-killing missile last month.

The Beidou (Big Dipper) satellite was launched from the Xichang Satellite Launching Centre in southwest China's Sichuan province aboard a Long March 3-A rocket, Xinhua news agency said.

The satellite separated from the rocket 24 minutes into the flight and has successfully entered its planned orbit, the report said.

The launch was the first since China shocked the world on January 11 with a successful missile test that destroyed an orbiting Chinese weather satellite.

The satellite-killing missile raised global concerns of a renewed arms race to weaponise outer space.

The test made China only the third country in the world -- after the United States and the former Soviet Union -- to down an object in space.

Saturday's satellite launch was the fourth in the nation's Beidou (Big Dipper) experimental navigation satellite system that began in October 2000, Xinhua said.

The system is expected to be fully operational for clients in China and Asia by 2008 and according to current plans the network is to be expanded into a global positioning system in the future, it said.

The system will provide "navigation and positioning services in transportation, meteorology, petroleum prospecting, forest fire monitoring, disaster forecast, telecommunications and public security among others," it said.

China is one of several countries in the world capable of developing such a system on its own, it added.

Source: Xinhua News Agency

Source: Agence France-Presse

GPS Upgrade Underway

2007-02-06T06:15:00.000-08:00

GPS Upgrade Will Require Complicated Choreography

File image of a GPS military satellite.
by Staff Sgt. Don Branum
50th Space Wing Public Affairs
Schriever AFB CO (SPX) Feb 06, 2007
Space professionals with the 2nd Space Operations Squadron have a daunting task ahead of them this summer: replacing the command-and-control system for GPS without any loss of "on-time, on-target" service to military or civil users. The new system, called the Architecture Evolution Plan, will provide 2nd SOPS with the tools to command upcoming generations of GPS satellites, said 1st Lt. Robert Kaegy, who is assigned to 2nd SOPS' AEP migration program.
The upgrade consists of hardware and software to replace the original command-and-control system, which has operated since GPS' inception, said Capt. Brian O'Connell, GPS Modernization Flight commander.

"The system will be capable of commanding and controlling the GPS constellation much as we do today, but planned software drops will also allow us to control the new II-F block of satellites when they're ready to fly," Captain O'Connell said.

The system also lets operators link directly into the Air Force Satellite Control Network, more than doubling the number of sites they can use for satellite command and control.

"This provides us with a greater capability to command our satellites, reduce commanding visibility gaps and potentially reduce our anomaly response time," Captain O'Connell said.

The transition process won't be as simple as turning off one system and turning on another, however.

"The core of the system is something called the Kalman Filter," Captain O'Connell said. "This system takes in data from our monitoring stations worldwide and uses this data to predict where each of the satellites will be in the future. This model is constantly updated, and the model in turn is uploaded to each vehicle."

The Kalman Filter makes sure each GPS satellite is broadcasting a precise navigation and timing signal. The new system will have a new Kalman Filter--which means the system will have to be carefully aligned with the current system's Kalman Filter.

"If we didn't do this, and we began uploading satellites with data from the AEP Kalman Filter, those vehicles would tell you that you're in a different place than the vehicles that still contain 'legacy' uploads," Captain O'Connell explained. "Clearly you wouldn't want your GPS receiver trying to tell you that you're in two different places."

In addition, each GPS ground antenna and monitoring station must migrate to the new system.

"This is a complicated piece of choreography," the captain said.

The process of converting the constellation and ground system takes about five days.

Related Links
2nd Space Operations Squadron
GPS Applications, Technology and Suppliers

New MT CORS Correction Station Added

2007-02-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

January 25, 2007

ONE NEW STATION HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.

Coordinate information, logfile and RINEX2 data is now available for the
following National CORS site.

BIL5 (Billings, MT)

Galileo Woes Continue

2007-02-01T07:14:00.000-08:00

From - The Business UK

THE CONSORTIUM building the €2.3bn (£1.5bn, $2.9bn) European Galileo satellite will be dissolved in March unless it can resolve the infighting that has paralysed the project.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has issued an ultimatum to the eight aerospace and manufacturing companies who have failed to agree on how to divide up the work and missed deadlines.

Last week Jean-Jacques Dordain, the director general of ESA, which is funded by member states, announced a March deadline to determine whether to force the dissolution of the industrial consortium, which includes Britain’s Inmarsat, France’s Thales, and pan-European EADS.

A break-up of the group would be a significant blow as the firms struggle to create a rival to America’s Global Positioning System. The project involves launching a network of 30 satellites to orbit the earth. These will enable individuals to identify exactly where they are from any point by way of hardware that intercepts a radio signal; critics believe that the plan will also eventually have a military dimension, though this is denied by European officials.

The first satellite, which was supposed to be launched two years ago, remains grounded, and a further four are scheduled to be in orbit for 2009 but are likely to be delayed.

Last year Dordain launched three separate inquiries into the delays which were caused by Europe’s biggest aerospace hardware manufacturers failing to agree on sharing out the work, and failures with components.

The project has been plagued with problems. In June last year Britain’s future in Galileo was in jeopardy as two government departments argued over who should pay for the next financial instalment. The row between the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Transport over funding has since been resolved.

America has also been lukewarm over the system.

GLONASS Gains Momentum

2007-01-29T07:29:00.000-08:00

Russia And India Sign Agreements On Glonass Navigation System

File image of Glonass class satellite.
by Staff Writers
New Delhi (RIA Novosti) Jan 25, 2007
Russia and India signed two cooperation agreements Thursday on Russia's global space navigation system Glonass, which will be used by Moscow's long-time partner in the military-technical sector. Glonass, a Russian version of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), is designed for both military and civilian purposes, and allows users to identify their positions in real time. It can also be used in geological prospecting.
The agreements were signed by the head of Russia's Federal Space Agency, Anatoly Perminov, and Madhavan Nair, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), with President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in attendance.

Perminov earlier said Russia and India plan to jointly use Glonass.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, who is also currently in India, said Tuesday that Moscow and New Delhi had agreed to launch Glonass-M satellites with the help of Indian booster rockets, and to create new-generation navigation satellites.

In December 2005, President Vladimir Putin ordered that the system be ready by 2008, and Ivanov said Glonass would be available to domestic users for military as well civilian purposes by the end of 2007.

Perminov said earlier that Russia is also in talks with the United States and the European Space Agency to prepare agreements on the use of Glonass jointly with the GPS and Galileo satellite navigation systems.

The agency plans to have 18 satellites in orbit by late 2007 or early 2008, and a full orbital group of 24 satellites by the end of 2009, he said.

Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister, said late last year that Russia will lift all precision restrictions on Glonass beginning in 2007, which will enable accurate and unlimited commercial use of the military-controlled global positioning system.

Current restrictions limit the accuracy for civilian users of Glonass to 30 meters.

The first launch under the Glonass program took place October 12, 1982, but the system was only formally launched September 24, 1993.

Andrei Kozlov, the head of the Reshetnev Research and Production Center in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, Russia's leading spacecraft manufacturer, said earlier the Glonass system currently has 13 satellites in orbit.

The satellites currently in use are of two modifications - Glonass and its updated version Glonass-M. Glonass-M has a longer service life of seven years and is equipped with updated antenna feeder systems and an additional navigation frequency for civilian users.

A future modification, Glonass-K, is an entirely new model based on a non-pressurized platform, standardized to the specifications of the previous models' platform, Express-1000.

Glonass-Ks' estimated service life has been increased to 10-12 years, and a third "civilian" L-range frequency has been added.

Tests on Glonass-K satellites are scheduled for 2007.

Source: RIA Novosti

GPScorrect issues

2007-01-25T07:15:00.000-08:00

Those states and/or tribes that invested in older version of Trimble GPScorrect may want to take note of these issues. The state of WV had purchased over 15 copies of version 1.0.

Older versions of GPS Correct will not work at all with ArcPAD 7.00. However the 7.01 patch from ESRI will allow use of a Trimble GPS in an ArcPAD environment. However this use is limited. No .ssf time signature file will be collected by ArcPAD from your Trimble GPS and this means no post processing of you data will be possible.

Nick Schaer
WVDEP Program Development Geologist

China "Kills" Satellite in low-earth Orbit - GPS Risk?

2007-01-22T07:29:00.000-08:00

From CNN - Another reason is stay awake at night....

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- China last week successfully used a missile to
destroy an orbiting satellite, U.S. government officials told CNN on
Thursday, in a test that could undermine relations with the West and
pose a threat to satellites important to the U.S. military.

According to a spokesman for the National Security Council, the
ground-based, medium-range ballistic missile knocked an old Chinese
weather satellite from its orbit about 537 miles above Earth. The
missile carried a "kill vehicle" and destroyed the satellite by ramming
it.

The test took place on January 11. (Watch why the U.S. has protested
the missile strike )

Aviation Week and Space Technology first reported the test: "Details
emerging from space sources indicate that the Chinese Feng Yun 1C
(FY-1C) polar orbit weather satellite launched in 1999 was attacked by
an asat (anti-satellite) system launched from or near the Xichang Space
Center."

A U.S. official, who would not agree to be identified, said the event
was the first successful test of the missile after three failures.

The official said that U.S. "space tracking sensors" confirmed that the
satellite is no longer in orbit and that the collision produced
"hundreds of pieces of debris," that also are being tracked.

The United States logged a formal diplomatic protest.

"We are aware of it and we are concerned, and we made it known," said
White House spokesman Tony Snow.

Several U.S. allies, including Canada and Australia, also have
registered protests.

Under a space policy authorized by President Bush in August, the United
States asserts a right to "freedom of action in space" and says it will
"deter others from either impeding those rights or developing
capabilities intended to do so."

The policy includes the right to "deny, if necessary, adversaries the
use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

Low Earth-orbit satellites have become indispensable for U.S. military
communications, GPS navigation for smart bombs and troops, and for
real-time surveillance. The Chinese test highlights the satellites'
vulnerability.

"If we, for instance, got into a conflict over Taiwan, one of the first
things they'd probably do would be to shoot down all of our lower
Earth-orbit spy satellites, putting out our eyes," said John Pike of
globalsecurity.org, a Web site that compiles information on worldwide
security issues.

"The thing that is surprising and disturbing is that [the Chinese] have
chosen this moment to demonstrate a military capability that can only
be aimed at the United States," he said.

Cool quickTime Movie of the Expansion of US Survey Control

2007-01-17T13:40:00.000-08:00

May need to download QuickTime

http://celebrating200years.noaa.gov/foundations/spatial/survey_network.html

GPS III Anticipating 2013 launch

2007-01-16T09:35:00.000-08:00

Press Release from GPS News

Boeing Passes GPS III Milestone and Receives Follow-on Funding

A Boeing GPS class satellite.
by Staff Writers
St. Louis (SPX) Jan 05, 2007
Boeing has successfully completed a critical U.S. Air Force review of its Global Positioning System (GPS) Space Segment III program and has been awarded a $50 million contract for additional system design activities. The Delta System Requirements Review, completed in November, featured an incremental capability insertion approach designed to ensure low development and delivery risks.
The review is part of a $10 million follow-on order to the Phase A Concept Development Contract awarded in 2004. The U.S. Air Force is expected to award the multi-billion dollar GPS III contract in 2007.

The $50 million cost-plus-fixed fee contract supports a System Design Review in March 2007 and key program decision points in June 2007. The modification adds detailed system engineering and design, and continues risk reduction efforts as the Air Force moves toward initial launch in 2013.

"GPS III sets a new standard for space-based navigation, and the Boeing team is well positioned to provide this next-generation system to ensure U.S. global leadership in space-based navigation," said Boeing GPS Program Director John Duddy. "GPS III will provide transformational capabilities, such as anti-jamming, to our customer and our warfighters, along with better accuracy and interoperability with Europe's Galileo system for our civil and commercial users."

Boeing is working closely with the U.S. Air Force to deliver new, advanced GPS capabilities to the military, civil government and the general public as early as possible. This includes Boeing's current production of 12 GPS Block IIF satellites under a contract from the Navstar GPS Wing at the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. Boeing will deliver the first GPS IIF satellite in 2007.

Related Links
Integrated Defense Systems
GPS Applications, Technology and Suppliers
The latest information about the Commercial Satellite Industry

GPS NEWS

Determining GPS Accuracy

2007-01-16T09:27:00.000-08:00

Good article on accuracy issues with GNSS at GPS World

http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=395779

New CORS Stations Added in CO, OH, MT, NM, and WY

2006-12-15T12:45:00.000-08:00

SIXTEEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK.

Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the
following National CORS sites.

OHFN (Wauseon, OH)
OHHU (Norwalk, OH)
OHLO (Oberlin, OH)
OHLU (Toledo, OH)
OHMR (Celina, OH)
OHRI (Mansfield, OH)
OHVW (Van Wert, OH)
OHWI (West Jefferson, OH)
P031 (Rifle, CO)
P032 (Rawlins, WY)
P043 (Newcastle, WY)
P046 (Ovando, MT)
P049 (Belt, MT)
P054 (Ekalaka, MT)
P055 (Glendive, MT)
P107 (Grants NM)

TIPS RTK in Action - Decker, MT

2006-12-14T13:38:00.000-08:00

Figure 1 Catherine Dreesbach, Montana DEQ Reclamation Specialist, secures the RTK radio antenna to the mast.

TIPS Deploys Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GPS Equipment to State of Montana for GIS- Building

(Decker, MT) TIPS responded to customer requests for survey-caliber GPS by field-deploying a Topcon RTK system that allows Western Regional users to achieve centimeter positioning on minesites. TIPS stakeholders from Montana, New Mexico, and the Casper Field Office were trained on-the-job during the week of November 6th at the Decker and Spring Valley mines. During a typical Northern Plains weather week, the temperature plunged from the mid 70’s to the 30’s by the end of the training. The mine control points were mapped to georeference the minesite coordinate system to the Montana State Plane coordinate system used for the Montana DEQ GIS.

TIPS first tested this technology in the Region in the late 1990’s with Trimble equipment that was used mainly to perform topographic surveys and to provide ground control for aerial imagery. That equipment found a permanent home at the State of Virginia Division of Mined Land Reclamation

The new RTK units use the Russian GLONASS system of satellites to augment the US NAVSTAR satellites that we know as GPS. This extra satellite component is valuable for Northern US TIPS customers due to the orbital inclination of the GLONASS constellation.

TIPS is offering use of the RTK system to its Western Region customers after they attend a mandatory training session. To find out more about RTK in general, or the TIPS RTK system and how to get in on the training, contact Robert Welsh at rwelsh@osmre.gov or 303.844.1400 x 1478.

Powerful Solar Storm Could Impact GPS Dec. 14-15

2006-12-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

Official Space Weather Advisory issued by NOAA Space Environment Center
Boulder, Colorado, USA

SPACE WEATHER ADVISORY BULLETIN #06- 5
2006 December 14 at 10:04 a.m. MST (2006 December 14 1704 UTC)

**** GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS ****

A geomagnetic storm began on December 14 at 1416 UTC (9:16 A.M. EST). A
solar flare on 13 December at 0240 UTC (12 December, 9:40 P.M. EST)
from NOAA Region 930 produced strong radio blackouts (R3) and an
associated moderate (S2) solar radiation storm. A large Earth-directed
coronal mass ejection was also observed with this event, producing
todayâ??s geomagnetic storming. Strong to severe (G3 â?? G4) geomagnetic
storming is expected to last through 15 December.

Region 930 is a large sunspot group which is still rotating across the
visible disk. Because of the current position of Region 930,
additional activity has greater potential to quickly impact Earth.
Agencies impacted by space weather storms should continue to closely
monitor space weather conditions during the next four days.

Data used to provide space weather services are contributed by NOAA,
USAF, NASA, NSF, USGS, the International Space Environment Services
and other observatories, universities, and institutions. More
information is available at SEC's Web site http://sec.noaa.gov

Solar Flares May Disrupt GPS Signals

2006-12-06T09:11:00.000-08:00

Official Space Weather Advisory issued by NOAA Space Environment Center
Boulder, Colorado, USA

SPACE WEATHER ADVISORY BULLETIN #06- 3
2006 December 06 at 8:28 a.m. MST (2006 December 06 1528 UTC)

**** RADIATION STORM EXPECTED ****

A minor (S1) radiation storm is expected sometime after 06/1530 UTC
(10:30 a.m. EST) due to yesterday's major solar flare (R3) from NOAA
sunspot Region 930. The energetic solar particles that drive these
radiation storms have been gradually climbing during the past 24 hours
and are now expected to reach minor levels. Region 930 also produced a
moderate (R2) flare at 06/0823UTC (3:23 a.m. EST) which may also be
contributing to the energetic particle counts. Minor radiation storms
may result in minor impacts on HF radio communication in the polar
regions.

Region 930 rotated into view as a large, magnetically complex sunspot
group and is expected to produce additional moderate flares with a good
chance for more major flares. Agencies impacted by solar flare radio
blackouts, radiation storms, and geomagnetic storms should closely
monitor conditions as Region 930 rotates across the Sun between now and
18 December.

Data used to provide space weather services are contribued by NOAA,
USAF, NASA, NSF, USGS, the International Space Environment Services and
other observatories, universities, and institutions. MOre information
is available at SEC's Web site http://sec.noaa.gov

Data used to provide space weather services are contributed by NOAA,
USAF, NASA, NSF, USGS, the International Space Environment Services
and other observatories, universities, and institutions. More
information is available at SEC's Web site http://sec.noaa.gov

Reply

New Garmin MapSource version

2006-11-28T12:53:00.000-08:00

Changes made from version 6.11.5 to 6.11.6:

This version of MapSource no longer supports Windows 98, Windows ME,
and Windows NT.

Fixed an issue with transferring map sets larger than 2 GB to units.

MapSource supports transferring map sets up to 4 GB in size. Note that
some units do not support map sets over 2 GB in size.

Fixed an issue with MapSource not finding Google Earth Pro when
installed

http://www.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=209

ESRI article and MC Power

2006-11-27T05:48:00.000-08:00

Published in Summer 2006 Arcnews (links to NRCS stuff in article):

http://www.esri.com/news/arcnews/summer06articles/optimizing-pdas.html

Also, little ad in back of Popular Science led to this link (don't need a currant bush anymore!!!):

http://www.thesolarpowerstore.com/index.html

New CORS GPS Stations in AZ (Chinle), AL, OH, VA, UT

2006-11-21T06:32:00.000-08:00

November 17, 2006

TWELVE NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK

Coordinate informaiton, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the
following NATIONAL CORS sites.

AL20 (Tuscumbia, AL)
AL30 (Birmingham, AL)
AL50 (Tuscaloosa, AL)
AL70 (Troy, AL)
BLA1 (Blacksburg, VA)
OHDT (Dayton, OH)
OHMD (London, OH)
P009 (Marysvale, UT)
P011 (Chinle, AZ)
VAWI (Wallops Island, VA)
VIKH (Kingshil, VI)
VITH (St.Thomas, VI)

New NAVSTAR Block IIR launch

2006-11-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

A Boeing Delta II launch vehicle today successfully delivered to orbit a replenishment Block IIR Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite for the U.S. Air Force.

The Delta II rocket carrying the GPS IIR-16 (M) satellite lifted off from Space Launch Complex 17A at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., at 2:12 p.m. Eastern time, deploying the satellite to a transfer orbit 68 minutes later.

The Delta II, known as the workhorse of the launch industry in its payload class, has launched all of the GPS IIR satellites. The launch also marked the second GPS mission aboard a Boeing Delta II in less than two months. GPS IIR-15 lifted off from Cape Canaveral on Sept. 25.

“Our Delta team understands the importance GPS satellites play in protecting our military and helping them defend our country,” said Dan Collins, vice president and general manager, Boeing Launch Systems. “The Delta II vehicle has a strong record of performance, and I am proud of the team’s commitment to mission success and our role in sustaining the GPS constellation.”

The Boeing Delta II 7925-9.5 configuration vehicle used for today’s mission featured a Boeing first stage booster powered by a Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne RS-27A main engine and nine Alliant Techsystems (ATK) solid rocket boosters. An Aerojet AJ10-118K engine powered the storable propellant restartable second stage. A Thiokol Star-48B solid rocket motor propelled the third stage prior to spacecraft deployment. The rocket also flew with a nine-and-a-half-foot diameter Boeing payload fairing

A redundant inertial flight control assembly built by L3 Communications Space & Navigation provided guidance and control for the rocket, enabling a precise deployment of the satellite.

GPS IIR-16 (M) is the third of the modernized GPS satellites that feature greater accuracy, increased resistance to interference and enhanced performance for users.

The GPS network supports U.S. military operations conducted from aircraft, ships, land vehicles and by ground personnel. Additional uses include mapping, aerial refueling and rendezvous, geodetic surveys, and search and rescue operations.

GPS provides military and civilian users 3-D position location data in longitude, latitude and elevation as well as precise time and velocity. The satellites orbit the Earth every 12 hours, emitting continuous navigation signals. The signals are so accurate, time can be figured to within one millionth of a second, velocity within a fraction of a mile-per-second and location to within 100 feet.

Original Source: Boeing News Release

New CORS Base Stations in IL, MO

2006-11-16T06:13:00.000-08:00

November 13, 2006

THREE NEW COOP CORS ADDED
TWMW in Waterloo, IL
WIFH in Fairview Heights, IL
SRDX in Chesterfield, MO

New NAVSTAR GPS Launch

2006-11-15T09:36:00.000-08:00

NEW GPS 2R-16 (M3) SATELLITE READY TO BE LAUNCHED ON NOVEMBER 15

According to

http://spaceflightnow.com/tracking/index.html

A Boeing Delta 2 rocket will launch, November 15, the third modernized NAVSTAR
Global Positioning System Block 2R military navigation satellite.

Launch window: 1921-1934 GMT (2:21-2:34 p.m. EST)
Launch site: SLC-17A, Cape canaveral Air Force station, Florida

Xmas present form GLONASS - Track your dog!

2006-11-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Russia To Lift Glonass Restrictions For Accurate Civilian Use

The Glonass Russian Satellite.
by Staff Writers
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 14, 2006
Russia will lift all precision restrictions from 2007 in the use of military-controlled Glonass to enable accurate and unlimited commercial use of the global positioning system, the defense minister said Monday. Glonass, a Russian version of the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS), is designed for both military and civilian purposes, and allows users around the globe to identify their positions in real time. It can also be used in geological prospecting.
Sergei Ivanov said: "By January 1, 2007, the General Staff will lift all restrictions on the precision of coordinates, so that the system can be used to develop the economy and transportation system."

Current restrictions limit the accuracy for civilian users of Glonass to 30 meters.

Ivanov told a meeting between the Cabinet and the president that Glonass would cover all of Russia by the end of 2007, which would require 18 satellites.

"The whole project is ready and has received support from the economics ministry," said Ivanov, who is also a deputy prime minister.

Global application of the system by the end of 2009 will require 24 satellites, he said. "Today, 14 spacecraft are in orbit," Ivanov said, adding that another three satellites would be launched December 25.

Ivanov also said a senior designer had been appointed for the system, "Yury Urlichich, who will be responsible for both the orbiting satellites and ground-based equipment."

The defense minister also said his ministry and the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade would be in charge of the Glonass services market.

The Russian Space Agency approved the Russian military's decision to put Glonass into commercial use.

"We think that canceling restrictions for all Russian citizens using Glonass signals opens unlimited opportunities, and will encourage the development of the new and promising market of satellite navigation," spokesman Igor Panarin said.

He said that Glonass services would be a luxury for most people in Russia to begin with. "But with time, every housewife will be able to place a portable satellite navigator on her dog's collar so that she can know where her pet is at any given moment," Panarin said.

Source: RIA Novosti

UK Protects Ordinance Survey Service Model

2006-11-01T09:32:00.000-08:00

Copyright the Guardian newspaper UK

Free our data

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UK fights against tide on data directive

A Europe-wide project to harmonise access to geographical data is at risk due to Britain's support for state-owned agencies

Michael Cross
Thursday July 27, 2006
The Guardian

Britain is threatening to kill at birth a project to simplify access to data crucial to the protection of Europe's land, air and water - unless it is modified to protect the interests of state-owned mapping agencies.
Inspire (www.ec-gis.org/inspire/), a European directive, seeks to end the situation in which neighbouring countries cannot make plans to deal with common issues because their national geographical databases do not line up. These differences can be as basic as the height of sea level. For example, notes Dr Max Craglia of the European commission's joint research centre in Ispra, Italy, there is a two-metre difference between Belgium and the Netherlands in the official height of low tide - essential data for flood prevention. The anomalies multiply when many national agencies and tiers of government are involved, as can be the case when protecting stretches of coastline from damage.

Inspire, which has been going through the EU's legislative process for two years, seeks to end such anomalies. It will require public bodies to make their "spatial information services" understandable and accessible among tiers of government and across national boundaries.

Nearly everyone supports the idea. But making geographical data freely available would destroy the business model of agencies such as Ordnance Survey, which funds activities by making a "profit" on sales of maps and geographical data. The OS warns of the threat in its latest annual report, published on Tuesday.

Charging policy

The government said this week it would support OS's right to set charges. Its position, which it claims has the backing of member states in the council of ministers, will lead to a clash with the European commission and parliament when the process of turning Inspire into law reaches its climax this autumn. Failure to agree could kill the whole initiative.

Followers of Technology Guardian's Free Our Data campaign will recognise a theme: the inevitable conflicts that arise when public bodies try to earn money from information resources gathered at public expense or with public resources. The campaign argues that such data should be made freely available for other public bodies to exploit and for private industry to turn into information products.

The UK is unusually committed to charging users for data rather than funding its dissemination from taxation. One expert places Britain at the extreme end of the spectrum, while its system of crown copyright is unique in Europe.

Concern about Inspire has been mounting in OS and its continental counterparts. In February 2005, Duncan Shiell, the OS's strategy director, warned MEPs that Inspire could be interpreted as banning the receipt of cash for cartographic work.

Lobbying - through EuroGeographics, which represents mapping agencies - stepped up when the parliament's environment committee proposed amending the previously agreed directive to free up access to data. In June, the parliament voted for a series of amendments. Amendment 18 would prevent mapping agencies blocking access to data on the grounds that access would compromise intellectual property rights. Another said fees charged for accessing data should be limited to the cost of processing the request.

Following the vote, the mapping agencies' lobbying escalated. Conservative MEP Geoffrey Van Orden warned of potential serious consequences for UK national security if information about maritime surveys was made freely available.

A critic at the other end of the spectrum, Liberal Democrat MP Chris Huhne, said such concerns verged on pottiness. However, he called on the government to protect the business of OS, whose headquarters lie in his constituency.

The UK government seems to sympathise with both criticisms. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is leading the UK's work on Inspire, said that while it supports the initiative, it has "some concerns". It will want to ensure that UK data trading policy is protected, that "any technical requirements are workable, proportionate and affordable" and that the directive "does not compromise national defence".

Conflicting views

Although the European council of ministers broadly supports Britain's position, it is in conflict with both the commission and the parliament. The directive now goes to a "conciliation process", which must be completed by the end of this year.

A spokesman for the UK in Brussels said the UK would support Inspire, but only if it agreed with the final text. "Our position is firmly that it is up to member states to decide the level of charging."

The implication is that Britain would be prepared to see the directive fall rather than compromise OS's commercial position.

Craglia says he is confident that Inspire will happen. However, he detects other factors at work. While one third of Europe's population live in a transborder area, few Britons do. As a result, moves to harmonise data across borders have a low priority to the UK government.

Christopher Corbin, a veteran critic of the trading fund model, puts it more bluntly. "It's the island nation mentality."

· What is Inspire?

Inspire stands for "infrastructure for spatial information in Europe". It is a European directive that will require governments to make geographical data available more easily, in order to underpin common policies to protect the environment. The idea is to ensure that environmental data is collected to the same standards and scales across Europe and is freely available to all. Proposed in 2004 by the EC, the directive sets out five principles:

· Spatial data should be collected once, at the level best suited to the task;

· Data from different sources should be capable of being shared among many users and applications;

· All levels of government should have access;

· Data needed for good governance should be available on conditions that do not restrict its extensive use;

· It should be easy to discover which spatial data is available and under what conditions.

Disagreements centre on the fourth condition. In effect, the European parliament says charging for geographical data restricts extensive use. The third arm of the European legislative process, the council of ministers, disagrees.

If the disagreement can be settled by the end of the year, the Inspire directive will become law.

· Join the debate at the Free Our Data blog: www.freeourdata.org.uk

· If you'd like to comment on any aspect of Technology Guardian, send your emails to tech@guardian.co.uk

New CORS Stations in OH, TN

2006-10-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

SIXTEEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK

Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the
following National CORS sites.

MIBX (Baraga, MI)
MICV (Centerville, MI)
MISI (St. Ignace, MI)
MISJ (Saint Johns, MI)
MIWC (White Cloud, MI)
OHAL (Lima, OH)
OHAS (Ashtabula, OH)
OHCO (Coshocton, OH)
OHDR (Greenville, OH)
OHHI (Hillsboro, OH)
OHLI (Jacksontown, OH)
OHMN (Canfield, OH)
OHPO (Rootstown, OH)
OHRO (Chillicothe, OH)
OHUN (Marysville, OH)
TND1 (Dandridge, TN)

New GPS Generation Coming On-line

2006-10-27T10:23:00.000-07:00

SECOND MODERNIZED GPS SATELLITE BUILT BY LOCKHEED MARTIN BEGINS SERVICE FOR USERS WORLDWIDE
Team Poised for Next Launch Scheduled for Mid-November
DENVER, Colo., October 25, 2006 -- The second modernized Global Positioning System Block IIR (GPS IIR-M) satellite, designed and built by Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT] has been declared fully operational for military and civilian navigation users around the globe. This milestone is the culmination of a successful on-orbit deployment and check- out phase that allowed the spacecraft to begin service ahead of the planned schedule.

Launched last month from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. the GPS Block IIR-15(M) is the second in a series of eight Block IIR-M spacecraft that Lockheed Martin Navigation Systems is developing for its customer, the Global Positioning Systems Wing, Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. The third GPS Block IIR-M satellite is scheduled for liftoff on Nov. 14 from Cape Canaveral.

Each IIR-M spacecraft includes a modernized antenna panel that provides increased signal power to receivers on the ground, two new military signals for improved accuracy, enhanced encryption and anti-jamming capabilities for the military, and a second civil signal that will provide users with an open access signal on a different frequency.

"This milestone is the result of our team's focus on achieving mission success for our customer," said Don DeGryse, Lockheed Martin's vice president of Navigation Systems.
"We understand how vitally important GPS is to both military and civilian users around the world and we look forward to providing significantly improved navigation capabilities with the modernized IIR-M program."

The Global Positioning System enables properly equipped users to determine precise time and velocity and worldwide latitude, longitude and altitude to within a few meters. The satellite was declared operational on Oct. 12 by Air Force Space Command's 2nd Space Operations Squadron (2 SOPS) at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo., which manages and operates the GPS constellation for both civil and military users.

The spacecraft are the most technologically advanced GPS satellites ever developed and are designed to provide significantly improved navigation performance for U.S. military and civilian users worldwide. The satellite joins the first modernized IIR satellite, GPS IIR-14(M), successfully launched and declared operational last year and 12 other operational Block IIR satellites currently on-orbit within the overall 29-spacecraft constellation.

The modernized navigation payloads are being built by ITT in Clifton, N.J. The satellite upgrades along with final assembly, integration and test is being performed at Lockheed Martin facilities in Valley Forge, Pa.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 140,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2005 sales of $37.2 billion.

Contact:

NOTE TO EDITORS: Low- and high-resolution JPEG image files of a GPS IIR-M satellite are available at:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/GPS

Media Contact: Steve Tatum, 408-742-7531; e-mail, Stephen.o.tatum@lmco.com

ESRI Conference Abstract Deadline Now 11/7/2006

2006-10-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

The deadline to submit an abstract for the ESRI International User Conference (UC), the Education User Conference (EdUC), and the Survey & Engineering GIS Summit has been extended to November 7, 2006.

RTK Base Station "Decommissioned"

2006-10-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

Copyright Deseret News Salt Lake City, Utah Oct. 5, 2006

Detonated package ID'd as GPS survey machine

The bomb squad from the Salt Lake City Police Department detonated a suspicious package Monday night found in the parking lot of the ARUP building at the University of Utah's Research Park.
Tuesday, a man stepped forward to say the device that was blown up was actually a GPS survey machine that had been set up to collect data.
The black box with an antennae sticking out of it was reported to police as a "suspicious package" about 6 p.m. Monday.
Because they were unable to determine exactly what was in the box, a robot blew it up twice to render it useless.
As it turns out, the man who left the box there works for a local engineering firm, said Salt Lake City Police Detective Joe Cyr.
There was no information Tuesday on what kind of data the machine was collecting or how much the device was worth.

ArcPAD BT problem resolution form Rick Koehler

2006-10-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

We have a HP iPaq Navigation
Bluetooth GPS receiver that we wanted to use. Although
it would connect to the Tablet, ArcPad couldn't see it,
even with "FindGPS" installed.

The problem was that ArcPad only allows setting the COM
port to 1 - 32, and the auto-assign port function of the
Tablet's Bluetooth set the GPS receiver port to COM 40,
which could not be changed.

I discarded that connection setup, and created a new one,
not selecting auto-assign, but instead manually selecting
a COM of my choice (COM6 since I knew it would be exceptable
to ArcPad, and it was unused).

Worked fine. The rest of the settings:
COM = 6
Baud = 4800
Parity = Odd
Data Bits = 8
Stop Bits = 1

New CORS Stations in OH, AR

2006-10-16T09:04:00.000-07:00

THIRTEEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK

Coordinate information, logfiles, and RINEX2 data is now available for the
following National CORS sites.

ARMH (Mountain Home, AR)
IDBY (Rexburg, ID)
IDIF (Idaho Falls, ID)
MIAL (Alpena, MI)
MSCL (Cleveland, MS)
NDMB (Minot, ND)
NVLM (Las Vegas, NV)
NYDV (Dansville, NY)
NYFD (Dansville, NY)
NYRH (Riverhead, NY)
OHAD (West Union, OH)
OHTU (New Philadelphia, OH)
OHWA (Marietta, OH)

New Trimble "XC" Complements XB as Correctable, Inexpensive GPS engines

2006-10-04T11:56:00.001-07:00

http://www.trimble.com/pathfinderxc.shtml

http://www.trimble.com/pathfinderxb.shtml

New Trimble "XC" Complements XB as Post-process ready GPS engines

2006-10-04T11:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.trimble.com/pathfinderxc.shtml

http://www.trimble.com/pathfinderxb.shtml

New GPS CORS stations in OH, MS

2006-10-02T11:19:00.000-07:00

ELEVEN NEW STATIONS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE NATIONAL CORS NETWORK

MSCD (Clarksdale, MS)
MSHT (Harriesburg, MS)
MSMR (Meridian, MS)
NCET (Elizabethtown, NC)
NCKN (Kenansville, NC)
NCLU (Lumberton, NC)
NHUN (Durham, NH)
NJOC (Toms River, NJ)
OHAT (Athens, OH)
OHFA (Washington Court House, OH)
OHHA (Findlay, OH)

New GPS Satellite Launch

2006-09-29T08:03:00.000-07:00

US Air Force Takes Control Of Latest GPS Satellite

by Staff Sgt. Don Branum
50th Space Wing Public Affairs
Schriever AFB CO (SPX) Sep 28, 2006
A team of Airmen, civil servants and contractors with the 1st Space Operations Squadron here assumed launch and early orbit responsibilities for Global Positioning System IIR-M 15 shortly after it lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Sept.25.
The satellite's journey of 11,000 miles began with a spark as its Delta II rocket lifted off at 12:50 pm, Mountain Daylight Time, a year to the day after the launch of GPS IIR-M 14 in 2005.

Technicians at the Range Operations Control Center at Cape Canaveral could hear the rocket thundering toward orbit from their vantage point two miles away.

"We can hear it outside, guys ..we can hear it from inside the ROCC," said Karen Gauthier, the operations manager at Lockheed Martin's Valley Forge, Pa. facility.She and technical support teams from the Valley Forge facility were on the phone and collecting telemetry from Cape Canaveral.

GPS IIR-M 15 will provide two military signal bands and two civil bands.Its signal strength is two to four times more powerful than GPS Block II satellites launched less than 10 years ago, making the satellite more resistant to jamming, said Willard Marquis, a staff engineer with Lockheed Martin.

"People with GPS receivers don't get a signal strength, but they know whether the signal is corrupted," Mr.Marquis explained."You're more likely to get a signal from a Block IIR-M satellite near the horizon or in woods than you'd be with earlier satellites. The military bands on GPS IIR-M 14 and 15 are currently in use for development purposes -- they broadcast a signal, but for the moment, the signal does not carry any data, Mr.Marquis said.

1st SOPS is the only squadron of its kind in Air Force Space Command.1st SOPS supports GPS; Midcourse Space Experiment, a NASA Research and Development program and; working with 7 SOPS and CERES, collects booster telemetry.They are always in control through launches, anomalies, daily operations and satellite disposals.

"We support the 2nd Space Operations Squadron's GPS mission, and we have a couple of GPS satellites of our own," said Lt.Col.Craig Bomberg, 1st SOPS commander."We took over (today) after booster separation, and we'll hand the satellite over to 2nd SOPS next week.

The handover will occur after 1st SOPS Airmen and contractors have maneuvered the GPS satellite into its permanent orbit -- a route that carries it around the Earth every 12 hours.

The Air Force Satellite Control Network, operated by 22nd SOPS here, also supported the Delta II launch through its tracking stations at Guam and Hawaii.Satellites typically lose telemetry contact with the ground during the turbulent launch process; the 22nd SOPS detachment at Guam Tracking Station received a signal from the booster approximately one hour after launch.The satellite then separated from the rocket and was acquired for the first time approximately 15 minutes later at Kaena Point Tracking Station, Hawaii.

GPS provides 24-hour precision navigation and timing services to civil and military users.It provides combat capability to servicemembers overseas in applications such as Joint Direct Attack Munitions and handheld receivers.Civilian applications include automatic tellers and bank and stock market transactions.GPS first became available at full capacity in April 1995.

Solar Max in 2010 Likely to be Intense

2006-09-29T07:50:00.000-07:00

March 10, 2006: It's official: Solar minimum has arrived. Sunspots have all but vanished. Solar flares are nonexistent. The sun is utterly quiet.

Like the quiet before a storm.

This week researchers announced that a storm is coming--the most intense solar maximum in fifty years. The prediction comes from a team led by Mausumi Dikpati of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). "The next sunspot cycle will be 30% to 50% stronger than the previous one," she says. If correct, the years ahead could produce a burst of solar activity second only to the historic Solar Max of 1958.

That was a solar maximum. The Space Age was just beginning: Sputnik was launched in Oct. 1957 and Explorer 1 (the first US satellite) in Jan. 1958. In 1958 you couldn't tell that a solar storm was underway by looking at the bars on your cell phone; cell phones didn't exist. Even so, people knew something big was happening when Northern Lights were sighted three times in Mexico. A similar maximum now would be noticed by its effect on cell phones, GPS, weather satellites and many other modern technologies.

Dikpati's prediction is unprecedented. In nearly-two centuries since the 11-year sunspot cycle was discovered, scientists have struggled to predict the size of future maxima—and failed. Solar maxima can be intense, as in 1958, or barely detectable, as in 1805, obeying no obvious pattern.

The key to the mystery, Dikpati realized years ago, is a conveyor belt on the sun.

We have something similar here on Earth—the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt, popularized in the sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow. It is a network of currents that carry water and heat from ocean to ocean--see the diagram below. In the movie, the Conveyor Belt stopped and threw the world's weather into chaos.

The sun's conveyor belt is a current, not of water, but of electrically-conducting gas. It flows in a loop from the sun's equator to the poles and back again. Just as the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt controls weather on Earth, this solar conveyor belt controls weather on the sun. Specifically, it controls the sunspot cycle.

Solar physicist David Hathaway of the National Space Science & Technology Center (NSSTC) explains: "First, remember what sunspots are--tangled knots of magnetism generated by the sun's inner dynamo. A typical sunspot exists for just a few weeks. Then it decays, leaving behind a 'corpse' of weak magnetic fields."

Enter the conveyor belt.

"The top of the conveyor belt skims the surface of the sun, sweeping up the magnetic fields of old, dead sunspots. The 'corpses' are dragged down at the poles to a depth of 200,000 km where the sun's magnetic dynamo can amplify them. Once the corpses (magnetic knots) are reincarnated (amplified), they become buoyant and float back to the surface." Presto—new sunspots!

Right: The sun's "great conveyor belt." [Larger image]

All this happens with massive slowness. "It takes about 40 years for the belt to complete one loop," says Hathaway. The speed varies "anywhere from a 50-year pace (slow) to a 30-year pace (fast)."

When the belt is turning "fast," it means that lots of magnetic fields are being swept up, and that a future sunspot cycle is going to be intense. This is a basis for forecasting: "The belt was turning fast in 1986-1996," says Hathaway. "Old magnetic fields swept up then should re-appear as big sunspots in 2010-2011."

Like most experts in the field, Hathaway has confidence in the conveyor belt model and agrees with Dikpati that the next solar maximum should be a doozy. But he disagrees with one point. Dikpati's forecast puts Solar Max at 2012. Hathaway believes it will arrive sooner, in 2010 or 2011.

"History shows that big sunspot cycles 'ramp up' faster than small ones," he says. "I expect to see the first sunspots of the next cycle appear in late 2006 or 2007—and Solar Max to be underway by 2010 or 2011."

Who's right? Time will tell. Either way, a storm is coming.

Author: Dr. Tony Phillips | Production Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Solar Flare Effects on GPS can be Severe

2006-09-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

Newswise — Strong solar flares cause Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to fail, Cornell researchers have discovered. Because solar flares -- larger-than-normal radiation "burps" by the sun -- are generally unpredictable, such failures could be devastating for "safety-of-life" GPS operations -- such as navigating passenger jets, stabilizing floating oil rigs and locating mobile phone distress calls.

"If you're driving to the beach using your car's navigation system, you'll be OK. If you're on a commercial airplane in zero visibility weather, maybe not," said Paul Kintner Jr., professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell and head of Cornell's GPS Laboratory.

Alessandro Cerruti, a graduate student working for Kintner, accidentally discovered the effect on Sept. 7, 2005, while operating a GPS receiver at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, one of six Cornell Scintillation Monitor (SCINTMON) receivers. Cerruti was investigating irregularities in the plasma of the Earth's ionosphere -- a phenomenon unrelated to solar flares -- when the flare occurred, causing the receiver's signal to drop significantly.

To be sure of the effect, Cerruti obtained data from other receivers operated by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Brazilian Air Force. He found that all the receivers had suffered exactly the same degradation at the exact time of the flare regardless of the manufacturer. Furthermore, all receivers on the sunlit side of the Earth had been affected.

Cerruti will report on the findings Sept. 28 at the Institute of Navigation Meeting in Fort Worth, Texas, where he will receive the best student paper prize. The full results of the discovery will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Space Weather.

The flare consisted of two events about 40 minutes apart: The first lasted 70 seconds and caused a 40 percent signal drop; the second lasted 15 minutes and caused a 50 percent drop. But this flare was moderate and short-lived; in 2011 and 2012, during the next solar maximum, flares are expected to be 10 times as intense and last much longer, causing signal drops of over 90 percent for several hours.

"Soon the FAA will require that every plane have a GPS receiver transmitting its position to air traffic controllers on the ground," warned Cerruti. "But suppose one day you are on an aircraft and a solar radio burst occurs. There's an outage, and the GPS receiver cannot produce a location. ... It's a nightmare situation. But now that we know the burst's severity, we might be able to mitigate the problem."

The only solutions, suggested Kintner, are to equip receivers with weak signal-tracking algorithms or to increase the signal power from the satellites. Unfortunately, the former requires additional compromises to receiver design, and the latter requires a new satellite design that neither exists nor is planned.

"I think the best remedy is to be aware of the problem and operate GPS systems with the knowledge that they may fail during a solar flare," Kintner said.

The team was initially confused as to why the flare had caused the signal loss. Then Kintner recalled that solar flares are accompanied by solar radio bursts. Because the bursts occur over the same frequency bands at which GPS satellites transmit, receivers can become confused, leading to a loss of signal.

Had the solar flare occurred at night in Puerto Rico or had Cerruti been operating SCINTMON only at night, he would not have made the discovery.

"We normally do observations only in the tropics and only at night because that's where and when the most intense ionospheric irregularities occur," said Kintner. However, since no one had done it before, Cerruti was looking at "mid-latitudes" (between the tropics and the poles), where weaker irregularities can occur both night and day. As a result, SCINTMON detected the solar flare.

Other authors of the forthcoming paper include D.E. Gary and L.J. Lanzerotti of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, E.R. de Paula of the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais and Cornell research associate Hien Vo.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

© 2006 Newswise. All Rights Reserved.

Review of MC devices by MT DEQ

2006-09-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

TO: Lou Hamm

FROM: Julian Calabrese

DATE: September 25, 2006

SUBJECT: GPS Equipment

After some time using the mobile computing devices furnished by OSM to me I have the following comments.

Hewlett Pakard iPAQ PDA:

Positives:
• I like this device and have used it for most everything its capable of
• Compact
• Useful for everyday inspection and meetings
• Keeps notes easily
• Works well for navigational GPS and data work
• Data storage
• The HP folks were excellent with service when I had problems

Negatives:
• Crashes often (with the SD and CF cards data is safe)
• GPS is only capable of recreational grade.
• Screen is small for mapping purposes
• Not good for long days of data collection
• Durability is marginal (ok with drops and dust, but moisture bad)

Overall I like this platform for most uses as long as I take the negative points into account most of the time it is a dandy piece of equipment.

Trimble Recon:
I did not get a whole bunch of time on this device, but I was able to get some items for you. It functions pretty much like the HP; however, the CE mobile platform is set up so companies using it can configure it to their liking.

Positives:
• Case makes it more rugged
• PDA functionality

Negatives:

• I found that Trimble removed some of the handy features that the HP had.
• The touch screen was really sticky with the stylus and made the note taking cumbersome.
• The plug in GPS comes loose during transport and causes problems
• The screen is really small

Overall it is a handy device; however, with others around not much used. I do think it could be better for long data collection days due to durability and the note taking features are better than the trimble Geo XT. Also since it is a Trimble product the GPS correction capability should be available (I am learning about this and was unable to test it).

Teletype GPS 16 channel:

I find this GPS to function well with the Blue tooth PDA and it is one of the accurate recreational GPS units. The drawback is that there is not a good way to attach it and you have to hold it in a hand or make a way to get it to stay in a place it gets a signal.

GlobalSat GPS 20 Channel:

This GPS has a great belt mounted carrying pouch and it will hold a signal when you walk through a building and jump in and out of cars. However, the accuracy is definitely the downside I had many points off by quite a bit. Points were consistently off in the same direction so if there is a way to correct it would be a really nice Blue Tooth type receiver.

I believe these are all the devices I have that need reporting on. Please contact me with any questions.

More Galileo Delays - GLONASS Looking Better and Better...

2006-09-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

Launch Of Second Galileo Test Satellite Delayed Until 2007

Galileo's test satellite GIOVE-A shows off it's solar arrays.
by Staff Writers
Frankfurt (AFP) Sep 12, 2006
Galileo, the navigation system that Europe hopes will rival the reigning US GPS network, is experiencing delays, with the launch of the second test satellite, GIOVE-B, set back several months, the Financial Times Deutschland quoted a company spokesman as saying on Monday.
"The launch is now planned for spring 2007," the spokesman for Galileo Industries was quoted by the newspaper as saying. Initially planned for spring of 2006, the launch of the GIOVE-B test satellite had already been postponed until this autumn. FT Deutschland said the renewed delay was due to technical problems connected with components. But they had nothing to do with the atomic clock that the satellite was equipped with, it added.

The first Galileo test satellite, GIOVE-A, blasted off from Kazakhstan on a Russian rocket last December.

The spokesman insisted that the new delay would not affect the deployment of the Galileo system.

Source: Agence France-Presse

DGPS transmitter freq for OSM

2006-09-19T05:33:00.000-07:00

Long-time coming and I only have provisional authority via e-mail but Main Interior IOS informs "in writing" that the OSM frequency assignment is: 411.975 MHz

Illinois and Eastern CORS Stations Added

2006-09-15T06:51:00.000-07:00

September 13, 2006

FIVE COOP CORS ADDED

DuPage County Illinois has added DP5A in Hanover Park

KARA Company has added 2 more sites.
KA14 in Charleston, IL and KA15 in McHenry, IL

Loyola Spatial Systems has added 2 more sites.
LOYD in Lanham, Maryland and LOYE in Ripley, West Virginia

National Geodetic Survey Toolkit

2006-09-14T06:13:00.000-07:00

Check out this site for coordinate system conversion freeware, the OPUS static survey-grade GPS correction service and much more!

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/TOOLS/

VPN/Mobile Computing App Example for inspectors

2006-09-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here is an app that is from the Mesquite, NV Police department website utilizing VPN, GPS, and mobile computers deployed in concert. Something like this could be prototyped for our inspectors in AFO or elsewhere.

THE TECHNOLOGY
Panasonic CF-28 Laptop
Panasonic PDRC Remote Display
Sierra MP775 EDGE Modem
Ledco Trunk Mount Laptop Dock
Netmotion Wireless VPN
Trimble GPS

Today's Police Departments require not only the latest technology, but also the most reliable. Officers cannot afford to go onto the streets without being armed with information. The MPD Intranet helped to fill this gap. With over 70 databases accessible on the Police intranet at their desk or in their car, a simple interface was required to manage all of this data and not get lost in this "sea of information".

The Process

The home page of the MPD intranet displays the most relevant information for the officers shifts. Items include the most recent stolen vehicles, BOLO's (Be on the lookout) with photos, weather maps and much more.

The tools that are available to officers are very specialized for each task. One such tool is the mugshot system. Officers in the field have access to over 50,000 mugshots via the intranet in their cars and this tool has identified many suspects without having to return to the station to retrieve this information.

With the amount of data available to the police officers, the Super Query tool was developed to help process all of the information in a reasonable amount of time. The Super Query can search through over five hundred thousand records in a matter of seconds. Just a few of the options that can be searched include addresses, partial names, partial license plates, vehicle makes and colors.

A new technology that was developed by Google and further developed for the MPD Intranet is Google maps. The data on the maps is automatically populated by reading the crime data from existing databases eliminating the need for a person to manually create the maps. Visual maps of crimes and sex offenders are easier to process than a plain text list. These maps can pinpoint crimes, sex offenders and problems areas. Several other departments outside the Police Department are now utilizing this technology. Similar applications from commercial vendors are priced over $80,000.00. Think of how you can use this open source technology for free.

Numerous other databases have helped the Police Department save money and allocate resources elsewhere. All of the ideas for the MPD Intranet come from the people that use it daily and this has enabled it to grow tremendously since its inception several years ago.

The Hardware

The Panasonic CF-28 laptop could be considered the Abrams Battle Tank of the laptop world. This unit meets Military Specifications for heat, vibration and durability. The unit is encased in a Magnesium alloy housing and is completely moisture and dust resistant. The hard drive is encased in a gel packed case to help dampen any vibrations that would destroy a normal hard drive and its data.

While the laptop spends 100% of its time in the trunk of the police car, a device called a PDRC sits up front with the officer. The PDRC is a ruggedized display screen and is touch screen enabled so that officer can request information on the computer by simply touching items on the screen. The officer also has a regular keyboard that is used when they need to enter or request specific data. The computer also has built-in wireless LAN so that the officers can receive large software or map updates when they're near a WIFI hotspot at a city facility.

The communications hardware for getting all of the data to and from the police vehicles is the Sierra Wireless MP775. This modem is also ruggedized and is designed for the harshest environments. This modem can transmit data at speeds over 150kbps and was designed for wide area mobile communications. This modem also helps address officer safety by transmitting GPS coordinates back to the Police Dispatch center. Dispatchers can easily see where any patrol car or fire apparatus is at by looking at the GPS mapping screen on their dispatch console.

Mobile Computing in Action Photos needed!!!!!

2006-09-12T07:31:00.000-07:00

Please post interesting pics of mobile equipment in the field - of course, don't post anything you wouldn't want your Mom to see!

New! Satellite Tracker

2006-09-12T06:24:00.000-07:00

Check out the new Satellite Tracker link! Tracks all flavors in real time!

Reminder: Please Provide Written Accounts

2006-09-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

Those of you that have received Mobile Computing equipment from TIPS, please provide a one page written account of your experience with the equipment. It won't take much time and you can probably present it as a paper at a future Technology Transfer forum.

Include a brief description of the project, the role of the equipment, and the results achieved - both sucessful and non sucessful results. Please try to make a comparison in terms of time and effort between using the TIPS equipment and doing the job without the equipment.

We REALLY need this information to justify future purchases for TIPS customers. If you like these things and you want them to keep coming . . . .

New WAAS Satellites and Trimble equipment mods

2006-09-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

4 September 2006
MGIS: New WAAS Satellite Information
Two new WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) satellites have recently begun broadcasting correction signals. The signals can not be used by Trimble® Mapping and GIS GPS receivers because the satellites are currently in test mode and the corrections are unreliable. The signals are expected to be certified and fully operational later in 2006.
Description
Newly launched WAAS satellites, PanAmSat (PRN 135, 133 deg W) and TeleSat (PRN 138, 107.3 deg W) are broadcasting WAAS correction signals. Testing by Trimble indicates that these signals are not satisfactory for reliable use. The satellites are currently in test mode, so accuracy varies from sub-meter to over 100 meters of error. To view the status of these satellites, go to http://www.nstb.tc.faa.gov/incoming/New_WAAS_Geo_Status.pdf.
The following information is from the FAA status document:
• The service from both of these (satellites) is still undergoing test and has not been certified and is not yet being operated to FAA standards
• Unplanned outages may occur at any time
• The schedule information above may change without notice
• The signals will be left on overnight and weekends but repairs will not be accomplished until the next normal working shift if there is a failure
www.trimble.com Page 1
Solution
Once these corrections are confirmed as suitable for use, Trimble intends to release the appropriate updates to support its GPS receivers. The following updates will be required:
Trimble GPS receiver
Software
Receiver firmware
GeoExplorer® 2005 Series
Yes
No
GeoExplorer Pocket PC 2003
Yes
Yes
GeoExplorer CE .Net and CE 3.0
Yes
Yes
GPS Pathfinder® ProXT™ and ProXH™
Yes
No
GPS Pathfinder Pro XR and Pro XRS
Yes
Yes
GPS Pathfinder Power
Yes
Yes
GPS Pathfinder XB
No
No
www.trimble.com Page 2

2006-09-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

NDGPS led to the budget chop block

Aug 30, 2006
Nationwide Differential GPS (NDGPS) heads toward the budget chop block. Its 2007 allocation has been scaled back to zero. As in aught, nought, zot.

NDGPS, also referred to as the Coast Guard differential system, made its first NDGPS broadcast in the early-to-mid-90s. After years of industry talk about real-time DGPS, NDGPS was the first, mostly reliable source of real-time corrections that was free of charge (via your tax dollars).

Support from the mapping and non-aviation navigation markets pushed the government (the Department of Transportation took the lead) to continue the build-out of the NDGPS network. Each year, more sites were added, and NDGPS became a solid resource for folks wanting a free source of DGPS corrections that delivered meter-level accuracy. They just had to buy the hardware (beacon receiver and antenna) to use it. Today, more than ten years later, there are more than 80 broadcasting sites — and more planned — spread out over the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii, providing free DGPS coverage used by hundreds if not thousands of users on a daily basis.

A successful program?

Up to and including FY 2006, Congress and the President allocated a substantial annual budget for NDGPS improvements, operations, and maintenance. For example, the FY 2006 budget came to approximately $10 million — half of what was originally requested. Almost $100 million more is needed to complete the network build-out. After that, about $9.2 million is needed annually to operate and maintain the system.

However, unlike years past, this years budget (FY2007) for NDGPS improvements, operations and maintenance is………………….$0 (zero). The rumor mill says that since there’s no money to operate and maintain, some sites may actually be shut down. That’s not the case according to the Department of Transportation, however.

“The FY06 budget provides approximately $10 million for the NDGPS program. These funds will be used to operate and maintain the existing NDGPS system through October 1, 2007”, says Steven Kulm, Director, Office of Pubic Affairs for the DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration.

So that means no money for new sites that were planned for FY 20007, and no money for developing new technologies such as High Accuracy (HA)-NDGPS.

Wow, what went wrong?

The problem facing NDGPS today, in my opinion, is the lack of a “killer app.” In other words it’s a neat tool and serves hundreds (if not thousands) of people on a daily basis, but if it disappeared tomorrow, life would go on. Therefore, when it comes to cutting the budget during tight times, programs like NDGPS are prime targets.

Now, I’m guessing the DOT may say that PTC (Positive Train Control) may be the killer app for NDGPS because it reportedly will save the railroad industry “billions” each year. That may be so, but if it was that easy to sell, then no one would be hacking away at the relatively puny NDGPS budget.

Putting the pressure on NDGPS is the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Wide Area Augmentation Service (WAAS) program. Like NDGPS, WAAS is a free government service providing corrections to improve accuracy and reliability of GPS positioning. The FAA began developing WAAS in the mid-90s and it was declared operational in July 2003.

WAAS has two things going for it that NDGPS doesn’t.

• A killer app. The future of aviation navigation is based squarely on GPS, and WAAS is an integral part of that program. The FAA is banking so heavily on GPS and has so many initiatives based on GPS, that there is no way it can back its way out of the program…and it shouldn’t. There are so many valuable uses for GPS in aviation that it boggles the mind. Some applications are focused on efficiency (e.g. better traffic control and throughput) and others are safety-of-life driven (e.g. situational awareness such as ADS-B). Because of this, the FY 2007 budget for WAAS is close to $100 million.

• WAAS is easy to use for non-aviation folks like us. It’s a no-brainer and it comes standard on every GPS receiver you purchase today. Whereas NDGPS requires the use of additional hardware (a 300khz receiver) and a separate antenna, no additional hardware or software is required to use WAAS. Using WAAS is virtually automatic. NDGPS receivers will never reach that level of simplicity. Good quality NDGPS antennas, by their nature, are bulky and I have serious doubts that any company will attempt to design an NDGPS receiver-on-a-chip (some have tried and failed), especially at this late stage of the game. With those two strikes, consumer GPS units will never incorporate NDGPS technology. And thus NDGPS will never achieve mass-market status like WAAS already has.

Availability

The foothold that NDGPS-supporters are hanging onto is the issue of the correction availability. Whereas WAAS is satellite-based and is dependent on line-of-sight between the user and the broadcast satellite, NDGPS broadcasts corrections on the 283-325khz band and does not require line-of-site between the user and the transmitter. It can even be received inside some buildings. However, signal propagation is interrupted by rough terrain and in metro areas, and ambient radio interference can interrupt the signal too. Although it’s not a true national service, there are certainly areas where the NDGPS can be received and WAAS can’t. The reverse can be stated also.

Accuracy

The NDGPS vs. WAAS debate in the surveying/mapping community has been a lively one this past year. This is due largely to major GPS manufacturers introducing professional mapping GPS receivers that use WAAS to achieve meter-level accuracy. Although NDGPS has the capability of being more accurate than WAAS, meter-level accuracy seems to be good enough for most mapping applications given the additional expense and equipment overhead required to use NDGPS. Think about it: Garmin discontinued their NDGPS receiver product line and now every GPS product they sell is WAAS-enabled.

Fate

Clearly, from a funding perspective WAAS has won the battle for now and has NDGPS back on its heels. The next twelve months (or less) will determine the direction of the NDGPS program.

“At this time, the U.S. Department of Transportation is deliberating how to administer the program in the future. We anticipate the Administration’s proposed FY08 budget (to be released in early 2007) will provide guidance on what the future of NDGPS will be,” says Kulm.

The challenge for NDGPS-supporters in the next few months is to not let the purse-string holders forget about NDGPS and its niche applications. If it’s business-as-usual in FY 2007 and the purse-string holders don’t feel the pain, what are the odds they’ll throw money at NDGPS in FY 2008?

— Eric Gakstatter (GPS World)

2006-09-06T08:58:00.000-07:00

Bob,
An interesting article. It seems like Russians are not very competitive or ambitious people at all.....:>)

Glonass To Be Deployed In Full By 2010

2006-09-01T08:44:00.000-07:00

Glonass To Be Deployed In Full By 2010

by Staff Writers
Moscow, Russia (RIAN) Aug 31, 2006
Russia's 24-satellite navigational and global positioning system, Glonass, will be fully deployed by 2010, the country's Defense Ministry said Wednesday.
The ministry's press office said the development and use of Glonass was discussed in Moscow at a meeting between Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov and members of a government military commission.

"In his introductory speech, Sergei Ivanov said Glonass was extremely important to the country's defense and its economic development, and was ranked among the strategically vital elements of the country's infrastructure," the office said.

Also discussed were ways to improve the competitiveness of navigational services, the mass production of navigational equipment for consumers, as well as legal issues.

Glonass is a Russian analogue of the United States Global Positioning System, which is designed to allow users around the globe to receive signals from satellites to identify their position in real time.

Source: RIA Novosti
Related Links
GPS Applications, Technology and Suppliers

2006-08-31T09:47:00.000-07:00