The development of GPS
The drive for development
The development of the GPS camera was out of necessity. As technology has advanced, GPS has also advanced to what we know as today. We could not have a Global Position System without the advancement of rockets and satellites. Ironically, we may owe a lot of this to the Soviet Union with them launching the first satellite and the cold war along with them shooting down the KAL 007 civilian plane in 1983 when it went astray in Soviet Union airspace. This pushed the United States to accelerate the pace to develop the Global Positioning System and for the first time it is open to civilian use. Now, GPS can be found in almost every facet of our lives, from driving navigation to uses outdoors, at workplaces or in the mountains.
The need
During World War II, the military realized they needed to find a better way to navigate than the stars and weak or fading radio signals from radio towers. Many times when pilots flew missions, they used radio signals to return home to their home bases when they returned home. This was fine if the pilot or navigator was close to their planned return routes, but if they were wrong in their navigation to begin with, they would have a hard time picking up the paging signal. They had to be within a given distance that was determined by the strength of the signal. In the early 1940s, the LORAN system was under development for military use, being used both on land and at sea.
The first big breakthrough
When Sputnik was launched in 1957, a group of American scientists were monitoring its radio transmissions. They soon realized that Sputnik’s signal was highest as it approached the satellite and lowest when the satellite had passed and receded from them, due to the Doppler effect. They theorized that if they knew its fixed position on earth, they could find out the exact position of the satellite by measuring the Doppler distortion or calculating where the satellite was in its orbit from its position on the ground.
The US Navy was the first to successfully test a satellite navigation system in 1960, it was known as Transit. This system was based on a constellation of five satellites that orbited the earth. The drawback of this system was that you could only get a navigation fix once an hour. For GPS to ever work, they needed to have accurate clocks in space. The US Navy once again took a step forward by launching the Timation satellite in 1967 which accomplished this.
The world’s first ground-based radio navigation system came online in the 1970s. It was known as The Omega Navigation System, but it was based on a single phase comparison.
Advance
In early 1978, another experimental line of GPS satellites known as Block-I was launched, to be followed by ten more to be launched in 1985. Modern Block-II satellites began launching in early 1989 to begin to replace and improve the Block. -I system already running. In December 1993 operational capability was finally reached and by January 1994 a full constellation of 24 satellites had been installed. The oldest operating satellite in the system was launched in early 1989, and the newest satellite was launched in September 2006.
After the Soviet downing of the Korean KAL 007 aircraft in 1983, President Ronald Regan announced that the civilian population would have access to use the GPS navigation system once it was completed. During the administration of President Bill Clinton, the government realized the importance of the GPS system for civilian and military users. Clinton then created the Interagency GPS Executive Board to manage and oversee the Global Positioning System. At this point, GPS really became a dual-use system for both civilian and military use. In 1998, then-Vice President Al Gore announced future plans for an upgrade to the GPS system to include two new signals for civilian use, intended for aviation use and safety, and to improve the reliability and accuracy of the system. In 2004, with an updated national policy, President George W. Bush announced that the GPS Interagency Executive Board would be replaced by the National Executive Committee on Space-Based Timing, Navigation, and Positioning due to the importance of the GPS system for us in our daily life. .
With the rapid advancement of technology in today’s world, there will be many changes in the GPS industry. We will find it increasingly intertwined with our lives as more uses for it are developed.
For more information on GPS, visit us at http://www.gpselectronicssite.com.