| Satellite Subsystems » Payloads » GPS | | |
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What is the Global Positioning System?
The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a worldwide radio-navigation system comprising a constellation of 24 satellites and their ground stations.
GPS uses these "man-made stars" as reference points to calculate positions accurate to a matter of meters. In fact, with advanced forms of GPS you can make measurements to better than a centimeter!
In a sense it's like giving every square meter on the planet a unique address.
GPS receivers have been miniaturized to just a few integrated circuits and so are becoming very economical. And that makes the technology accessible to virtually everyone.
These days GPS is finding its way into cars, boats, planes, construction equipment, movie making gear, farm machinery, even laptop computers.
So, what is BLUEsat doing with its GPS unit?
Is that all the GPS unit can do?
Of course not! We're only touching the tip of the iceberg here.
One example of something that can be done is space-science studies of the ionosphere. The ionosphere is an electrically charged layer of the atmosphere which, because of it's extreme sensitivity to atmospheric charges, is a very sensitive monitor of atmospheric events.
The GPS satellite's orbit is much higher than that of LEO satellites, so if we take GPS slices of the ionosphere, it is possible to build up a 3D moving picture of the ionosphere.
The CRCSS is one organisation studying the ionosphere in this manner, using FedSat.
I'm interested in GPS, can you tell me more?
A good introduction to GPS can be found here: http://www.latrobe.edu.au/crcss/GPS.html
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| Author: Kelvin Chu © The Author, the BLUEsat project or UNSW. All rights reserved. Last Modified: August 28 2005 10:43:58. |