Launch of India's First Navigation Satellite Successful 89
An anonymous reader writes "India's first dedicated navigation satellite, the IRNSS-1A, developed by the Indian Space Research Organization, was successfully put in orbit on Monday night. The launch vehicle, PSLV-C22, bearing the 1,425-kg navigation satellite, blasted off the launch pad at the Satish Dhawan Space Center here at the scheduled lift-off time of 11.41 p.m."
The satellite is the first of seven that will eventually provide a regional equivalent of GPS under complete Indian control.
Re:Out of curiosity... (Score:3, Informative)
From the link provided above:
The payload generates navigation signals at L5 and S-band. The design of the payload makes the IRNSS system inter-operable and compatible with GPS and Galileo. [skyrocket.de]
iphone5 supports glonass.. (Score:4, Informative)
iphone 5 for one.. here's a list http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Smartphones_using_GLONASS_Navigation [wikipedia.org]
Re:So far, it sucks. (Score:4, Informative)
It is not three, preferably four. It is four.
One tells you a circular line on the globe where you could be at any place on that line.
Two tells you two intersections of that line you could be.
Three tells you either one of the two points where you are located within a margin, or what altitude you are within a margin.
The fourth one is to determine which of the two points you are located, your altitude, and gives significant increase in accuracy by providing overlapping spatial and temporal data.
It may appear that three is enough as most receivers have a rudimentary altimeter based on pressure. Even in such cases, the accuracy is very poor and reasonable navigation requires computation of previous known points along with your estimated speed and direction. It is better than doing it by hand (unless you have a compass and know how to use it), but not by much.