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Staying on course: The vital role of GPS backup systems – The Space Review

July 23, 2024

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What’s New: An item in Space Review about the importance of backup systems for GPS.

Why It’s Important:

  • Innumerable systems, applications, and infrastructures depend on GPS for proper operation. When things go wrong with GPS reception, those system can go really wrong.
  • We have used this example often, but a commercial passenger aircraft nearly impacted a mountain because of GPS interference. But for an air traffic controller noticing the flight path deviation and “backing up GPS” by calling the plane on the radio and giving vectors, it would have been a tragedy.

What Else to Know: This article is based on the London Economics paper about GPS disruptions in aviation we commissioned. But it is a different and unique perspective on the paper than we have seen before and is worth a read.

 

Staying on course: The vital role of GPS backup systems

by Lauren Miller
Monday, July 22, 2024

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) refers to the constellations of satellites that provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) information to users around the globe. The unique characteristics of GNSS have enabled it to be the PNT solution of choice in a wide range of applications, including Critical National Infrastructure (CNI).

Historically, aviation has been inextricably linked with GNSS. It was following the Soviet shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 in 1983 that what was then the military-only GPS was opened for civilian use. In 2003, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) developed and launched the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), a Satellite-Based Augmentation System (SBAS) for aviation. In 2011, the safety-of-life service of the European SBAS, EGNOS, became available for aviation.

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