Blog Editor’s Note: Excellent article by the former federal government leader for civil PNT issues, Diana Furchtgott-Roth. Who is also an RNTF member!
While not mentioned, most all of her points also apply to not letting adjacent band transmissions (read “Ligado”) interfere with GPS reception. But then there is only so much you can put in one article.
She makes an excellent point saying:
“As part of its $2 trillion infrastructure bill, the White House has proposed $740 billion over ten years for transportation, climate technology, infrastructure research, and clean energy. Allocating $100 million a year to back up GPS would be about one tenth of one percent of this total.”
Though we are pretty sure all the needed backups and complimentary systems could be had for much less than $100M/yr.
We also like her conclusion:
“President Biden believes climate change is a major problem. Now is the time to take needed steps to measure it by backing up GPS.”
We are looking forward to this afternoon’s GWU webinar where she will be a panel member discussing GPS backup technology and the way forward.
Accurate GPS Needed to Measure Climate Change
May 05, 2021
President Biden, in his address to Congress, described climate change as one of the “crises of our time,” along with pandemics, terrorism, and mass migration. To resolve that crisis, it is vital to safeguard the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is used to measure how the climate is changing.
Shoring up GPS is a shovel-ready project. The Transportation Department is ready to roll out a plan. Earlier this year the Department of Transportation published a report on 11 different technologies to back up and complement GPS if satellites went down.