Next-generation GPS satellites operational by 2022

©Mark Ollig   

 

The global positioning system (GPS) we use in our car and smartphones is operated and maintained by the US Air Force.

Currently, the US Navstar GPS satellite constellation includes a network of 24 primary satellites providing free navigational services to citizens located anywhere on the planet.

Navstar was first proposed as a global positioning satellite system by the Pentagon in 1973. Its first GPS I satellite was launched in 1978.

GPS II satellites were sent into Earth-orbit beginning in 1989, with the last in 2016.

This year, those satellites are in the process of being replaced by GPS III satellites.

The first set of GPS III satellites is named Block IIIA; the following set is called Block IIIF.

GPS III is the future generation Earth-orbiting US GPS navigational satellites.

The first of 10 GPS Block IIIA satellites was launched Dec. 23, 2018, using a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It currently orbits the Earth twice every 24 hours at an altitude of 12,550 miles. and will be undergoing testing for the next 12 months.

The second GPS Block IIIA satellite is slated to be launched in July.

Block IIIA satellites will provide three times better accuracy than current GPS II satellites.

All 10 Block IIIA satellites are expected to be operational by 2022.

Looking ahead, the first of 22 planned GPS Block IIIF satellites is scheduled to launch in 2026, and the last in 2034. Their operating life is yet to be determined.

It’s not publicized much, but since 1980, GPS satellites have been equipped with thermonuclear detonation sensors for detecting nuclear explosions anywhere on the planet. It is called The GPS Nuclear Detonation Detection System.

This information is not classified; but, for the most part, not generally known by the public.

If a nuclear explosion did occur, the data from all satellites observing it would be transmitted to ground stations for immediate processing.

Atomic clocks are recognized as the most accurate time and frequency standard.

Each Block IIIA satellite has a built-in rubidium atomic clock, which is synchronized with the other satellites’ clocks.

There are three GPS segments: space, control, and user.

The US Air Force manages, performs upgrades, and maintains the space and control segments of the GPS.

The space segment is made up of the actively-operating GPS satellites transmitting to Earth their orbiting position and other operating data.

The control segment is comprised of 16 global monitoring stations geographically located around the world. It also includes 11 command and control antennas.

The master control station is located and operated by the 2nd Space Operations Squadron at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, CO.

The personnel there ensures the GPS satellites stay in their proper orbit and maintain clocking for correct timing. They also upload navigational data to the spacecraft.

The master control station is backed up by a fully-functioning alternate master control station located at Vandenberg Air force Base in California.

Updates, including software to protect against cybersecurity threats, are regularly made to the control segments of the GPS.

The user segment is the GPS receiver equipment (in our car or on our smart device) we use to acquire data signals from GPS satellites.

The streets and highway information presented on our GPS receiver screen are the output from “moving mapping software,” which is decoding the triangulated satellite signals, calculating, and then displaying our geographical position and travel destination route.

The operating lifespan for the new GPS Block IIIA satellites is 15 years, which is 25 percent longer than prior GPS satellites.

In July, the second GPS Block IIIA satellite, named “Magellan” in honor of Ferdinand Magellan, the Portuguese explorer, will be launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) is China’s version of our GPS.

April 20, China launched the 44th BDS satellite from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The BDS website is http://en.beidou.gov.cn.

Russia’s navigational satellite system is the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). It has 26 (24 operational) Earth-orbiting satellites providing worldwide coverage. Its website is https://www.glonass-iac.ru/en.

The US government’s official GPS website is https://www.gps.gov.

Dated July 27, 1983, the US Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information’s 13-page paper, “The Nuclear Detonation Detection System on the GPS Satellites,” can be viewed at https://bit.ly/2Vji5hm.

Illustration of a GPS IIIA satellite in Earth-orbit
Source: gps.gov

GPS III Space Vehicle 02 “Magellan” arrives in Florida in 
preparation for its July launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
Source: gps.gov

 

Illustration of a GPS II satellite in Earth-orbit
Source: gps.gov

Internet statistical data, projections

©Mark Ollig        

Cisco Systems Inc., headquartered in San Jose, CA, is one of the primary manufacturers of network equipment that keeps the internet operating.

Cisco released their updated “Forecast and Trends White Paper” Feb. 27.

They predict global IP (Internet Protocol) data traffic by 2020 will reach a staggering 4.8 sextillion bytes (ZB) or 4.8 trillion gigabytes.

It is said our human brain has about 3 gigabytes (3GB) of information/data storage space.

Our brain also has 100 billion neurons, each having 10,000 connections passing signals to each other through as many as 1,000 trillion synaptic links.

When we take this into account, most computational neuroscientists believe the brain’s actual storage capacity is from 10 terabytes (10TB) to 2.5 million gigabytes or 2.5PB (petabyte).

But, I digress.

When we look at the enormous amount of digital internet data out there, one can easily be overwhelmed with the numbers.

Each day, 2.5 quintillion bytes or 2.5 exabytes (2.5EB) of digital data is generated over the internet. It would require 10 million Blu-ray discs to hold this amount of data.

I was surprised to learn the amount of data created by US companies each year alone could fill 10,000 Libraries of Congress.

The continued growth of devices working interactively or autonomously over the internet include smartphones, smart cars, smart wearables, smart home devices, digital cameras; internet-connected refrigerators, ovens, toasters, and other appliances; and many different kinds of IoT (Internet of Things)-connected devices.

Next year, an estimated 220 million “smart cars” with built-in IP capability will become part of the digital landscape, having direct internet connectivity.

The following internet statistics are worth noting:

• There are 4.35 billion internet users as of March 2.

• One-hundred percent of Iceland’s citizens use the internet.

• 2019 online sales will reach $3.5 trillion.

• Worldwide, nearly 2 billion people will be making online internet purchases this year.

• This year, an estimated 80 percent of US internet users will transact an online purchase.

• Every day, more than 3.5 billion Google searches are performed.

• Internet/Web bots (web robots or software applications running automated tasks) now account for 52 percent of all internet traffic, while 48.5 percent comes from you and me (humans).

• More than 49 percent of all online sales occur on Amazon.

• Businesses and consumers using IoT devices will save an estimated $1 trillion by 2020.

• Smartphones account for more than 70 percent of YouTube viewing.

• Every 60 seconds, 510,000 comments are posted and 136,000 photos uploaded using Facebook.

• Twitter has more than 69 million users in the US.

• More than 500 million tweets/messages are sent every day on Twitter.

• As of December 2018, 1.95 billion websites were active on the internet.

• The world’s first website, created by Tim Berners-Lee, was activated Aug. 6, 1991.

It is projected, by the year 2022, the internet will have added 1.5 billion new users, bringing the total global internet user count to 5.85 billion. The same year, the world’s population is forecast to be nearly 8 billion.

The internet continues to grow exponentially, and more of the devices we use in our daily lives – at home, in our car, and at our workplace – are being connected to it.

At some point in 2020, the world will have more than 50 billion smart, internet-connected devices collecting, analyzing, and sharing data.

Following the mysterious internet cable

©Mark Ollig

When Andrew Blum learned his internet outage was caused by a squirrel that had chewed through a copper cable, he became curious about determining where the physical part of the internet was.

Blum, a published writer and a correspondent for Wired magazine, began a personal quest to learn, firsthand, where the other end of his home internet cable went.

He wanted to pull back the curtain and see for himself what this mysterious cable was connected to out in the physical world.

“What would happen if you yanked the wire from the wall, and you started to follow it? Where would you go?” pondered Blum.

And with that, Blum embarked on a personal two-year journey; visiting the places and people that make up the physical internet.

At the 60 Street Hudson building in New York, Blum saw physical hardware: data-packet router boxes servicing online networks, possibly those of Facebook, Google, or Twitter. These routers were physically linked with yellow fiber-optic cables to other routers of major Internet Service Providers data networks.

“That’s unequivocally physical,” Blum realized.

The 60 Street Hudson building is also home to about six major communication networks that have fiber-optic cables traversing under the oceans. These fiber-optic cables connect America with Europe and many other parts of the world.

An undersea fiber-optic cable originates from inside a building called a landing station, and usually is located along a seaside neighborhood.

Most undersea fiber-optic cables crossing the oceans of the planet are about as wide as a garden hose.

A representative working for a communication’s company told Blum of a location, date, and time where he could see firsthand a fiber-optic cable brought onto shore from a specialized cable landing ship. The location was a beach south of Lisbon, Portugal.

Blum traveled to Lisbon, and arrived at the specified location around 9 a.m.

While standing on the beach, Blum could see the fiber-optic cable landing ship stationed approximately 1,000 feet out in the ocean.

The next thing he noticed was a man in a diving suit walking out of the water onto the shore holding a green nylon rope. This rope was the fiber-optic cable’s messenger line, used to pull the fiber-optic cable onto the beach.

Blum then heard and saw a bulldozer driving onto the beach.

This bulldozer was used to pull the messenger line; which was attached to the fiber-optic cable aboard the landing ship.

The bulldozer finished pulling the messenger line onto shore, and with it came many feet of fiber-optic cable.

The fiber-optic cable floated atop the water, attached to buoys which positioned the cable in the proper location.

The man in the diving suit went back out into the water with a knife to cut off the buoys and allow the fiber-optic cable to sink and rest on the ocean floor.

Blum took a photograph of the cable workers using a hacksaw to cut open the end of the fiber-optic cable pulled in from the ocean. It was being prepared for splicing to another fiber-optic cable being brought down from the coastal landing station.

“When you see these guys going at this cable with a hacksaw, you stop thinking about the internet as a cloud; it starts to seem like an incredibly physical thing,” said Blum.

This column writer was able to contact Blum for a brief interview.

Blum had just written a book about his two-year adventure and was kind enough to answer some questions for me.

B&B: Andrew, you said some people visually see the internet as the cloud-like image Opte has created. After two years of exploring and writing a book about the physical side of the internet, how do you see it now?

AB: I now have a pretty clear image of its physical realities, particularly the hubs closest to my home in Brooklyn. When a web page hangs, I often picture my cable company’s router, and curse the traffic on the yellow fiber-optic cable feeding it.

B&B: Many people feel the internet is connected worldwide via Earth-orbiting satellites; however, we know this not to be the case. What did you know about this before you started your investigation?

AB: No, even when I started, I knew it wasn’t connected by satellites. I’d read Neal Stephenson’s awesome piece in Wired from 1998, “Mother Earth Mother Board,” so I had a good starting understanding of the “tubes” under the ocean.

B&B: Vinton Cerf has talked about an “interplanetary internet.” What are your thoughts about Earth linking its network with other planetary bodies?

AB: I think that fits perfectly with the basic philosophical idea of the internet: a network of infinite networks.

B&B: What surprised you, or stays in your mind the most during your two-year exploration of the physical side of the internet?

AB: How small the internet turned out to be, both physically – the list of its most important buildings is surprisingly short; and culturally – the list of network engineers actively involved with interconnecting networks is also surprisingly short.

B&B: Andrew, is there another technology you would like to someday investigate and write about in the future?

AB: Good question. I’ve been thinking a lot about that now, but I don’t yet have a good answer.

I appreciate Blum for taking the time to talk with me about his book, “Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet.” It can be ordered from Barnes and Noble at https://bit.ly/2U5qK2e.

Update: Andrew Blum’s new book, “The Weather Machine” will be available June 25, and can be pre-ordered on Amazon.com.

Image: Kyodo/Associated Press