NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
How do GPS satellites navigate themselves?
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2024 Mar 7, 18:03 +0000
From: Alexandre Eremenko
Date: 2024 Mar 7, 18:03 +0000
In a popular book by a renown physicist (actually a Nobel prize winner), I found the statement that GPS satellites, to know their own position, use inertial navigation. This statement strikes me as a totally incredible (any inertial navigation system deteriorates with time, and quite quickly), but I could not quickly check this with Internet. I can imagine only 2 methods suitable for GPS satellites: a) CelNav, and b) Periodic signals from several VERY well-known locations on the Earth. I suppose that second method is used as more accurate and technically simpler. An I right? Alex.
