Happy 20th Birthday GPS!
4 Aug 2015GPS turns 20. Last month, clear across the globe, millions of people who are directionally-challenged celebrating its 20th anniversary.
The US Air Force made an official announcement on July 17, 1995, that the Global Positioning System was at full operational capacity. People who were prone to getting lost were undoubtedly grateful.
GPS tracking is an advancement that has become so embedded in our daily lives that it is a bit weird to think of it as being only 20 years old. It really feels as though GPS has been with us forever and is everywhere around us.
It kind of is, actually. There are four billion devices that are all locking on to our 24 solar-powered satellites, not to mention the five or more spares. It takes this many to offer us blanket coverage around the earth and make sure that signals will be received at any given point from four different satellites.
Position information and an atomic clock-driven time signal are broadcasted by the satellites in an extremely precise way. The GPS tracking device calculates the distance it is from this signal as well as three others, taking into account how long the signal took to travel from space to its position. If you think about it, that’s a lot of math to process on the fly and might help you understand more why you get that ‘calculating – calculating’ message which causes you to miss your turn while driving.
GPS is a part of our everyday lives, according to Centennial-based United Launch’s vice-president of Advanced Concepts and Development, George Sowers. He goes on to say that their rockets from both their current and heritage companies have launched each of the GPS satellites.
The original purpose was for navigation to allow airplanes, ships and troops to know precisely where they were on the Earth’s surface, Sowers said.
Now, GPS plays the role in a variety of civilian purposes from finding things that have gone missing to helping people find their way around.
Sowers said that it has helped people to find otherwise unlocatable people and objects. It can even help fight crime. By installing a GPS tracking device in your car, you can track it if it gets stolen.
“It is amazing how people continue to find new and innovative uses for the GPS signal,” said Micah Walter-Range, Space Foundation Director of Research and Analysis.
In the last 20 years, GPS has expanded and improved a great deal, including applications in farming, theft, wildlife, military, business, health, and more. It will be exciting to see how it’s applicability expands over the next 20 years.
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