[time-nuts] GPS at 60,000 feet

Grant Hodgson grant at ghengineering.co.uk
Sat Feb 2 13:07:02 UTC 2013


GPS has already flown in space several times; one of the well-publicized 
occurrences is when NASA sponsored an experiment to put a 6-channel 
Trimble receiver on the ill-fated AO-40 amateur radio satellite which 
launched in 2000.

This satellite had a highly elliptical orbit, with perigee of 1000km and 
apogee of 60000 km - well outside the GPS constellation.

The GPS experiment was one of the first experiments to be tested on this 
satellite and some useful results were obtained before the satellite was 
lost due to technical failures in 2004.

The results of the experiment have been published :-

ftp://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/chesters/goesref/Moreau_GPS.pdf

and

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20030025378_2003025844.pdf

Just google AO-40 GPS for more information.

regards
Grant


On 01/02/2013 14:16, time-nuts-request at febo.com wrote:
> Message: 6 Date: Fri, 01 Feb 2013 06:14:04 -0800 From: Jim Lux
> <jimlux at earthlink.net> To: time-nuts at febo.com Subject: Re: [time-nuts]
> GPS at 60,000 feet Message-ID: <510BCDAC.8080702 at earthlink.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed On 1/31/13
> 1:09 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
>>> >>I know  for sure my handheld Garmin works at 27000 feet, at
>>> >>530mph...   ...I was actually surprised it worked up there.
>>> >>It made me  wonder what the actual limits are.
>> >
>> >What are the limits of your hand held unit or what are the limits of
>> >GPS in general.   I think GPS works as long as you are under the orbit
>> >of the satellites.  The company I used to work for placed GPS on some
>> >low orbit spacecraft, so say roughly 200 miles up and 18,000 mph but
>> >I'd guess most hand held units would not work in those conditions
>> >


> GPS will even (maybe) work at the Moon: with a gain antenna pointed back
> at earth.. you're looking at the satellites on the opposite side of the
> earth radiating around the limb.  I don't know that anyone has actually
> tried it but it's certainly been analyzed to death.
>
> The potential problem with a handheld GPS in space (depending on where
> you are) would be whether you can keep track of the constellation and
> acquire new s/v's fast enough with lots o'Doppler.
>
> You already have to deal with the Doppler from the S/Vs buzzing around
> at 3-4 km/sec.  Whether your receiver can handle the extra 7 km/sec
> Doppler in LEO is a good question.  7 km/sec is about 20 ppm, and I
> suspect that the receiver can already deal with that much change in the
> oscillator frequency.  It might be doppler rate that it would have a
> hard time with (because the designer cranked down on the loop bandwidth
> for noise reasons)
>
> What are those folks flying GPS on CubeSats using?



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