The Association of the United States Army’s (AUSA) annual conference highlighted the growing popularity of small unmanned aircraft as well as the need to develop and refine counter-UAS systems to go up against them—all of which must operate in GPS-denied or degraded environments. Many, if not all, of the systems featured rely on precise positioning, especially in the GPS-denied environments frequently encountered on the modern battlefield.

During the conference, VectorNav introduced two new members of its GNSS/INS family to help meet such needs, the VN-210-S and VN-310-S. Both bring new GNSS capabilities and improved performance, according to the company.

The VN-210-S combines VectorNav’s IMU—composed of a three-axis gyroscope, accelerometer and magnetometer—with a new, triple-frequency GNSS receiver. The 448-channel from Septentrio (hence the S in the name) adds new capabilities, including L5 frequencies, Moving Baseline RTK with centimeter-level accuracy, and support for OSNMA message authentication and interference mitigation.

The VN-310-S also incorporates the IMU and teams it with two 448-channel GNSS receivers, along with support for OSNMA authentication and interference mitigation. For both systems, this means improved positioning performance in congested radio frequency environments or GNSS-denied areas.

Both are packaged in a precision milled, anodized aluminum enclosure designed to military standards and are IP68-rated. For ultra-low size, weight and power applications, VectorNav introduced L5 capabilities to the VN-210E (Embedded) when using an externally integrated L5-band GNSS receiver.

The VN-210-S and VN-310-S development kits are available for immediate purchase in low quantities, with full production and additional capabilities expected to be announced early in the first quarter of 2024.

PNTAX 2023

At roughly the same time as the AUSA conference, the Army conducted the fifth annual PNT Assessment Experiment, or PNTAX, which brought together joint and international defense partners and industry to experiment with emerging PNT technologies in an environment with degraded or denied GPS.

Held at White Sands Missile Range inAugust, PNTAX is part of Army Futures Command’s campaign of experimentation and continuous learning, where participants could field-test space-based, ground-based and aerial positioning technologies.

“Experiments like PNTAX provide a valuable opportunity for Soldier touchpoints that directly influence requirements,” said Mike Monteleone, director of the Army Futures Command Assured Positioning, Navigation and Timing/Space Cross-Functional Team (APNT/Space CFT), which hosted the event.

For this year’s PNTAX:

• Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division conducted terrain walks and feedback for the Dismounted Assured Positioning System.
• Soldiers from the 1st Armored Division conducted their own training objectives, faced with threat-based GPS denied and degraded environments.
• Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division worked with the CFT’s sensor-to-shooter team in the denied environment to learn from its effects on the links associated with the tactical architecture, while the 2nd Infantry Division conducted a variety of ground maneuver activities that enabled operations throughout the experiment.
• Allied partners from Canada and Australia joined to observe and scope future participation, while partners from the United Kingdom conducted land navigation experiments with their Soldiers. Multinational participants worked alongside their participating Soldiers and U.S. Soldiers to replicate what operations will likely look like in future, combined force settings.

The open-air denied, degraded, intermittent and limited environment at PNTAX was achieved through jamming and a variety of other threat interfaces that resembled real-world, layered approaches Soldiers might face in a multi-domain operating environment.

Next year, the Army intends to expand opportunities for allied partners, increase Soldier training activities and broaden the scope of electromagnetic spectrum experimentation.

The post AUSA Highlights Need for Systems with Resilient Navigation appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

NTS-3 Satellite Prepares for Launch to Experiment with Ways to Improve GPS.

Nearly 50 years ago, there were no smart phones, no GPS-guided weapons, no turn-by-turn direction systems in automobiles.

That’s when the U.S. Air Force launched the first two Navigation Technology Satellites, NTS-1 and NTS-2, to expand and improve the nascent positioning capability provided by GPS forerunner programs such as Transit and Timation. NTS-1, launched in 1974, and NTS-2, launched in 1977, weren’t part of the original GPS constellation but were instead orbiting testbeds for various technology systems such as clocks and solar cells.

Since 1977 and today, of course, satellite positioning has become an integral part of everyday life, and certainly an integral part of military operations. This was amply demonstrated in Ukraine, when an attack with an unmanned surface vessel on Russian targets failed because of a lack of satellite connectivity. It’s a technology that’s increasingly on every vehicle and in every pocket.

After this multi-decade burst of positioning activity, the U.S. Air Force is preparing to launch the third in the NTS series, NTS-3, next year, after several years of launch delays. Like its predecessors, it’s aimed to improve the GPS system. According to the Air Force Laboratory (AFLR), “it will push the boundary of today’s space-based position, navigation and timing technology to pave the way for a more robust, resilient and responsive architecture for satellite navigation technology.”

From the Beginning

The NTS-3 space vehicle was designed, developed, integrated and tested by prime contractor L3Harris. The company displayed a suspended model of the space vehicle above its booth at the recent Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington. The vehicle incorporates Northrop Grumman’s ESPAStar-D bus, which includes subsystems such as communications, power, attitude determination and control, as well as structures for mounting payloads.

“We’ve been doing the GPS payloads, payload technology since the program began,” Joe Rolli, director of business development for Space and Airborne Systems at L3Harris, told Inside GNSS at the conference. “We were involved with NTS-1 and NTS-2, in the beginning, in the 1970s.” (It was just Harris then, as the merger with L-3 Communications was long in the future.)

Since then, he noted, many things have happened. The rise of GPS has brought with it waves of jamming and spoofing, not to mention competition from other systems.

GPS has done very well since those early NTS days, with 98% accuracy and 99% reliability, Rolli said. However, “it’s 20th century technology now, and now the difference is, we’re not the only game in town anymore. China is coming up with the BeiDou system. They had the advantage to use GPS for 30 years for free, learn its strengths and its weaknesses, and use it to go about their daily business.…,” he said.

NTS-3 will carry 100 different flight experiments. According to AFRL, NTS-3 includes a space-based test vehicle, ground-based command and control, and agile software defined radios. NTS-3 will experiment with multiple integrated advanced technologies including electronically steered phased array antennas, flexible and secure signals, software-defined GPS receivers, increased ground control segment automation, and the use of commercial ground antennas.

“All the tests will be to counter current threats: jamming, spoofing, all the threats to GPS. That’s what the goal is, overcome jamming threats, put more power where power is needed, encryption, more advanced encryption for spoofing. It’s all about making GPS more resilient,” Rolli said.

“As a result of those flight experiments, the Air Force will decide how they incorporate that into the GPS enterprise,” he said. “So, it’s really all about innovation and technology, taking GPS from a 20th century technology to a 21st century technology.”

PNT Suit of Armor

As AFRL puts it, they’re “giving PNT signals a suit of armor.” NTS-3 will test a new digital signal generator that can be reprogrammed on-orbit, enabling it to broadcast new signals, improve performance by avoiding and defeating interference, and adding signatures to counter spoofing. AFRL will explore antenna configurations to provide Earth coverage and steerable regional beams in multiple frequencies and signal codes.

The spacecraft’s large L-Band, phased-array antennas allow it to generate spot beams while retaining the legacy broadcast ability for Earth coverage, according to a new AFRL video.

The system will test the Chimera signal authentication protocol, designed to verify the satellite orbit data and the range between the satellite and user, providing protection against GPS spoofing for civil users. It’s an acronym of sorts that stands for chips message robust authentication, which sends a signal that can be decoded by a key sent soon after. It’s designed to make spoofing threats easy to detect.

Future versions of Chimera can be uploaded to the satellite at any point, based on new threats, according to AFRL. The agency also noted that a cell phone gets regular updates, why not a satellite?

The space vehicle will also have multiple atomic clocks and timing sources onboard, to be used both independently and together to provide automatic clock error detection and correction.

The satellite will be entirely outside the GPS system, as it’s difficult to experiment with a technology while it’s working, Rolli said.

“It’s really hard to integrate and innovate on the current GPS system because it’s embedded in all our lives, so we came up with AFRL to set this program up where we could experiment with new signals, higher power, advanced signal capabilities, making GPS more resilient,” he said.

“So, this is completely independent where we can be free, totally in a lab environment, experimental, at a GEO orbit,” he said.

Ground Control to NTS-3

Braxton Science & Technology Group provided the ground control systems for NTS-3 (the company was acquired by Parsons Corp. in 2020).

NTS-3 will use a tailored version of Parson’s hybrid cloud ground control architecture, similar to DARPA’s Blackjack satellite and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s Polar Operational Environmental Satellites.

One goal, according to AFRL, is to move from stove-piped command and control systems, each designed for a single mission, to one that can support multiple Department of Defense (DoD) satellites.

The ground control system is also using commercially available services and products, including ground antennas and monitoring receivers, according to AFRL, as well as incorporating the government-certified cloud platform.

“The NTS-3 control segment allows for easier data sharing, enhanced situational awareness, and collaboration across multiple program partners across the United States,” according to the AFRL. “By demonstrating ways of effectively managing system complexity across space, ground control, and user equipment segments, NTS-3 will develop lessons learned and meaningful test data to transition to future DoD programs.”

The NTS-3 user segment includes MITRE’s Global Navigation Satellite System Test Architecture (GNSSTA) for software-defined receivers, or SDRs, that, according to AFRL, can take full advantage of the ability to reprogram the signal on orbit. The architecture allows users to receive both legacy GPS signals and advanced signals from NTS-3.

NTS-3 will demonstrate new SDR features, including various signal modulations, transmitting data in different ways and changing broadcast parameters on a pre-defined schedule.

“In the future, warfighters equipped with SDRs capable of receiving and processing reprogrammable SATNAV signals will be able to access accurate PNT data and enhanced flexible anti-jam and anti-spoof protections,” according to AFRL.

In January, the AFRL team successfully generated signals on the actual spacecraft and received them with the experimental GNSSTA equipment, Dr. Joanna Hinks, the NTS-3 principal investigator, said at a media day event in January.

Launch Schedule

The satellite—originally slated to launch in 2022, now in the summer of 2024—is in the final stages of test and integration for launch on a Vulcan Centaur rocket built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Vulcan was supposed to have launched by now, but the flight was delayed after an upper stage exploded during a test.

The Vulcan will have to be qualified to launch Department of Defense payloads before it will carry the NTS-3, Rolli said. Since the March test stand explosion, the launch alliance has conducted a successful engine test.

Once aloft, the NTS-3 has a one- to three-year mission life, he said. “Right now, it’s about one year for the mission experiments, but I’m sure it will go a little longer than that.”

The post Washington View: Making GPS More Resilient appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

NASA is seeking PNT requirements for advanced air mobility when GPS is not available, but the ultimate solution may come in many forms.

At the recent FAA AAM Summit, NASA’s Parimal Kopardekar, one of the main movers in the advanced air mobility field, was asked to name some of the top operational challenges facing AAM in the near term.

One part of his answer: the need for alternative position, navigation and timing (PNT) to buttress GPS, particularly for autonomous aircraft.

The term AAM encompasses a variety of systems, from piloted aircraft that operate much like passenger aircraft today—although they will be much smaller and likely will take off and land vertically—to fully autonomous “air taxis” that will fly autonomously or be operated remotely. As there will be relatively large vehicles flying over busy urban spaces, knowing exactly where each vehicle is located at any given time will be key.

“There are places, particularly urban areas, where there’s multi-path error, GPS is not reliable or is not available,” Kopardekar, universally known as PK, told Inside GNSS in a separate interview. “We would need solutions to be reliably operated in those conditions. There are companies working on it, we are working with a number of alternatives.”

The agency isn’t developing technology on its own, or even moving to select any particular technology, but is instead working to define the requirements for such a system or systems.

“There are a number of good companies and technologies,” he said. “One of the things we are interested in identifying is, what are the requirements for operating in an urban airspace for these alternatives to GPS? We don’t choose technologies, but we identify what the requirements are.”

Possible solutions could be anything from satellite-based systems to ground beacons, or even combinations of multiple systems, he said. Not all the systems are coming from companies with a traditional aviation background.

“There are some traditional aviation, there are some nontraditional aviation, we are working with one SBIR company called Higher Ground, but there are many others,” he said, including NextNav. The company uses terrestrial transmitters, which are essentially ground-based beacons.

The work is part of NASA’s AAM Mission unit, which stood up in 2020 and is intended to “help emerging aviation markets to safely develop an air transportation system that moves people and cargo between places previously not served or underserved by aviation—local, regional, intraregional, urban—using revolutionary new aircraft that are only just now becoming possible,” according to the agency.

NASA has an ambitious schedule for AAM, at least for passenger- or cargo-carrying systems that have a pilot on board, a development expected to arrive sooner than autonomous or remotely operated systems.

“A persistent understanding of positioning is a requirement,” Kopardekar said. “Piloted, you have less of that dependency, it’s just autonomous and such, that’s where it gets really important, I think.”

According to the FAA’s first Advanced Air Mobility Implementation Plan, released in July, some sort of system or systems will be operational by 2028, although that is far from a hard-and-fast date.

“There are places, particularly urban areas, where there’s multi-path error, GPS is not reliable or is not available.”

Parimal Kopardekar,
director, NASA Aeronautics Research Institute

“To address the development of a near-term ecosystem, the FAA created Innovate28 (I28), a joint government and industry initiative that will culminate in integrated AAM operations at one or more key site locations by the 2028 timeframe,” according to the implementation plan.

“For I28, the expectation is that the aircraft will operate from the surface to 4000’ above ground level in urban and metropolitan areas, and in relatively close proximity to or directly on airports. This means that AAM aircraft will operate predominately in or around Class B and C airspace. To operate within Class B airspace, pilots must receive ATC clearance, and aircraft are required to be equipped with an operating two-way radio, Automatic Dependent Surveillance—Broadcast (ADS-B) Out, suitable navigation capability, and an operable transponder with altitude reporting capability.”

One Option: INS

Shortly after Kopardekar was asked about the challenges for AAM, another panelist at the AAM Summit was asked how his company plans to deal with the issue of alternative navigation.

“We believe we have a solution,” said Erick Corona, director of concept of operations and airspace ecosystem development at Boeing-owned Wisk Aero, which is building a four-seat air taxi. “Having said that, the idea is for it to be everybody’s solution and treat it as infrastructure. That is an area where I believe collaboration with the agency and NASA is essential.”

Corona didn’t go into detail at the time, but Wisk has published its own plan, “Concept of Operations for Uncrewed Urban Air Mobility,” which came out in 2022.

“In case of a failure of a position source or a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) system outage, a redundant, multi-source positioning solution (e.g., a tightly-coupled inertial navigation system) will be necessary to ensure the safety of UAM aircraft,” according to the conops document. “Contingency procedures for partial failures of positioning or navigation systems will be designed to ensure safe completion of flights.”

This summer, at the Paris Air Show, Wisk revealed just who would be building that tightly coupled inertial navigation system—France’s Safran Electronics & Defense, which will supply its SkyNaute INS for Wisk’s sixth-generation air taxi.

“We are thrilled to be deploying Safran’s HRG technology as part of this,” Wisk CEO Brian Yutko said. “Our initial testing has confirmed the SkyNaute technology is a step change in navigation system performance and we look forward to deploying it on our 6th Generation air taxi.”

SkyNaute is based on Safran’s patented HRG Crystal Hemispherical Gyroscope, a hemispherical resonator gyro consisting of a number of small parts in a silica half shell, or resonator, made of extremely pure glass.

“It could be compared to making a crystal wine glass ‘sing.’ The slight deformation of the glass generates a wave, and detecting the position of the wave allows measuring its rotation,” according to the company’s website. “The HRG Crystal does not need to communicate externally to determine its position, which makes it fully independent and undetectable.”

The company’s inertial navigation module, named Onyx, is also based on the HRG Crystal gyro. Safran’s inertial navigation systems, whether civil or military or for land vehicles or ships, are now based on the Onyx inertial navigation core, which feature ITAR Free technologies and a modular design, according to the company.

“With very high levels of integrity and accuracy, even when GNSS signals are absent or jammed, SkyNaute hybrid inertial navigation system is designed to ensure the precise trajectory of the Generation 6 self-flying air taxi, during all flight phases, leading to an optimum flight safety,” Safran said, according to a Wisk press release. (At the same show, Safran announced that SkyNaute will also be part of Airbus’ Tiger attack helicopter modernization for vehicles operated by the militaries of France and Spain.)

Another Option: Satellite

Palo Alto, California-based Higher Ground is known for the SatPaq, which it bills as the world’s smallest, easiest to use and most secure satellite communicator. The company began with SatPaq as a consumer product for outdoor enthusiasts but has worked with the FAA and NASA, although its primary customer now is the Department of Defense, President Rob Reis said.

“We’re probably going to solve things first with the DoD because they’re kind of more needy. And then that technology can move over into domestic aircraft.”

Rob Reis, president, Higher Ground

The SatPaq’s basic PC board “is about the size of a credit card,” Reis said. “Okay. It’s a radio and antenna in the package. It’s about the size of a cell phone and we’re the first company to communicate from a pocket size device to geostationary satellites.”

Geostationary satellites are 23,000 miles above the Earth. “And the big advantage—there are several—but the biggest one is they don’t move in the sky,” he said. “And so, for robust connectivity, that really is a big advantage.”

Higher Ground is an 11-year-old startup, which he said isn’t unusual for a company making disruptive technology (with 36 patents granted), which has now caught the eye of U.S. Special Operations Command, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and others.

“You end up with really beyond visual line of sight connectivity for the military. A warfighter can put it in their pocket and wherever they go, they know they have connectivity,” Reis said. “From that, we got more and more involved in autonomous air vehicles.”

Although Reis said he and PK stay close, the DoD is working to solve the same issues with autonomous vehicles as NASA and the FAA, “but they have a bigger need and a bigger budget,” he said. “What I’ve discussed with PK is, we’re probably going to solve things first with the DoD because they’re kind of more needy. And then that technology can move over into domestic aircraft.”

Higher Ground has embarked on three technical missions: Pocket messaging from anywhere, including sending small files and photos; TrackPod, which adds a stepper motor to stay in satellite communication, and which can be fitted to autonomous vehicles to provide BVLOS operation; and, for navigation, GEOFix, a jam-resistant GPS surrogate.

“GPS, which is how most people do autonomous navigation, is very easy to jam,” he said. “It’s easy to jam because it’s all on one frequency. Nobody anticipated 50 years ago that there would be such a hacking of GPS.”

That’s where GEOFix, a project with the AFRL, comes in, which has already been demonstrated in two earlier phases. “We’re now into phase three, which is you can do navigation like you do with the GPS satellites, which are MEO, middle earth orbiting satellites. You can do the same thing with GEO satellites and with GEO you got a big, big advantage in that the GEOs typically have 200 to 500 megahertz of pass band, where the GPS satellites are really single frequency. And if you have a whole bunch of spectrum available to you, then you really can be, we call it jam hard, but it’s basically jam resistant because there’s just no way that jamming can keep up with the number of channels that I can put in the sky.”

In short, Reis said, the company is “solving the FAA issues, but we’re first solving them at the DoD level.”

He said SatPaq would be valuable but not critical for piloted AAM systems, but “when you give up the pilot, we’re essential. That’s the same issue with the DoD. There’s plenty of piloted stuff and we provide connectivity on piloted aircraft right now, but for that situation, it’s a convenience. But there’s a ton of money, as you’re probably aware, going into unmanned DoD vehicles. So, on sea, under sea, in the air. We’re a big part of that because you’ve got to have that level of robust connectivity and control.”

Another Option: Terrestrial Beacons

NextNav, based in Sunnyvale, California, has had its beacon system—named TerraPoiNT—evaluated by the U.S. Department of Transportation, NASA and the European Union’s Joint Research Centre.

“We’ve worked with NASA historically…we got the first NASA contract at Langley Virginia, where we deployed a dedicated system around Langley campus to characterize urban drone operations, so they’ve been using it and testing it since 2018 at that facility,” said Ganesh Pattabiraman, the company’s founder and CEO. In late 2022, NextNav announced NASA would use its system for urban air mobility PNT at Ames Research Center.

“We always feel that we are complimentary to inertials and cameras of the world that may be part of the vehicle in any case, so whether it becomes the de facto standard, time will tell, but we feel pretty good where we sit in the marketplace.”

Ganesh Pattabiraman, founder and CEO, NextNav

“Clearly, the system meets many of the requirements they believe are required for future AAM operations,” Pattabiraman said.

He described the hardware as looking like a dorm room refrigerator with an antenna on top, operating nationwide in the company-owned 920-928 Mhz band. “You trilaterate from four of them to figure out your location,” he said. “We’re able to give you position, navigation and time,” the latter from atomic clocks in each transmitter.

The system provides three to four meter vertical accuracy 94% of the time, and for 2D positioning in the five to seven meter range, or better. For on-route operations, “that’s plenty,” he said, although for takeoff and landing greater precision would be required and could be provided by other systems or by installing a beacon at a vertiport.

The system provides GPS-like service in areas, such as urban canyons, where GPS may be blocked or where it could be jammed.

“We are also working with several commercial partners and they recognize those issues. That’s where they come to a system like ours, that can operate independent of GPS and is a terrestrial system and provides the equivalent position, navigation and timing capabilities that can create a resilient layer around GPS that if GPS was unavailable because of building, clutter and blockages, then they can leverage a system like ours, or if it is jammed, also they can leverage a system like ours, because we are about 100,000 times stronger than GPS in signal power, and we are encrypted with our network, so it gives a level of protection that GPS may not be able to provide in these environments,” Pattabiraman said.

Asked whether NextNav’s TerraPoiNT could be a solution for future AAM systems, he said, “We always feel that we are complimentary to inertials and cameras of the world that may be part of the vehicle in any case, so whether it becomes the de facto standard, time will tell, but we feel pretty good where we sit in the marketplace.”

Future AAM Infrastructure

Which of these systems might find their way into a future infrastructure supporting AAM? Possibly any, or all, along with other systems not mentioned here.

“It could be a number of technologies…from satellite providers to ground-based beacon systems, some people use Wi-Fi, people have used geometric location devices, also some of them use fiber optics,” Kopardekar said. “I’m certainly not an expert in any one technology to say one way or other, but I will just say our goal is to understand the requirements rather than any specific technology.”

All images courtesy of NASA.

The post Washington View: AAM Navigation appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Recent bipartisan legislation aims to make satellite communication and PNT services more available to farmers.

Legislation that nudges the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to do more to make satellite communication and PNT services available to rural America, particularly farmers, has sailed through the House and is awaiting committee action in the Senate.

The bipartisan legislation—something of a rarity these days—is House Resolution 1339, the Precision Agriculture Satellite Connectivity Act, sponsored by Rep. Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio) and cosponsored by Reps. Robin L. Kelly (D-Illinois), Troy Balderson (R-Ohio), Susie Lee (D-Nevada) and Rich W. Allen (R-Georgia).

After passing the House of Representatives in late April by a vote of 409-11, H.R. 1339 landed in the Senate in early May, where it awaits action by the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Latta has been down this row before: In 2018, he was successful in getting wording included in the Farm Bill to create the Task Force for Meeting the Connectivity and Technology Needs of Precision Agriculture in the United States, operating under the FCC in conjunction with the Department of Agriculture.

As with the standalone legislation, it’s devoted to spurring deployment of broadband internet, with the goal of achieving reliable service on 95% of agricultural land by 2025. The task force, which includes agricultural producers, internet service providers, the satellite industry, precision agriculture equipment manufacturers and local and state government representatives, has been holding regular virtual meetings since its creation.

“I’ve talked with farmers throughout Ohio’s 5th congressional district that are utilizing advanced technologies to improve farm productivity and sustainability, and it’s making a big difference,” Latta said in 2018. “However, it’s clear that the agricultural community is at a disadvantage compared to other sectors because they are in rural areas that often have limited access to high-speed internet. It’s critical that we close the ‘digital divide’ to ensure that the agricultural community can fully utilize this cutting-edge technology.”

FCC Directions

Latta’s latest legislation isn’t controversial because it’s short, and essentially just directs the FCC to “review its rules regarding certain satellite communications services to determine if changes to its rules could promote precision agriculture.”

If the FCC determines there are rule changes that could be made to promote precision ag, “the FCC must develop recommendations and submit them to Congress within 15 months of enactment,” according to the bill.

And that’s pretty much it, which probably explains its easy path through Congress. Underlying the bill, however, are a host of issues that lawmakers, particularly those who represent rural areas, want to address, namely the “digital divide” that separates areas well served with broadband connections and those without access; the need for satellite data to make farming more efficient; and regulation and federal approvals said to be slowing the roll of an industry that’s raring to go.

A House report on the bill describes it this way:

“Precision agriculture allows for the optimization of crop yield, water usage and soil sustainability. Unfortunately, many rural communities have little or no connectivity, thereby reducing the ability for many farmers to utilize precision agriculture. Additionally, there are Earth exploration and observation services authorized by the FCC that could promote precision agriculture. These satellite technologies offer the opportunity to expand the use of precision agriculture throughout the United States, and this legislation would require the FCC to evaluate its rules to see if there are changes that can be made to promote this deployment.”

Latta is interested in the legislation because his district is one of the largest agriculture regions in the state. While some farmers are using satellite connections and precision agriculture, others aren’t but would like to.

Two hearings were held in the House related to the issue, by the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology (chaired by Latta), although neither was specifically about the bill. The first, held in early February, was titled “Launching into the State of the Satellite Marketplace.” The second, held less than a week later, was “Liftoff: Unleashing Innovation in Satellite Communications Technologies.”

Transforming Industries, Including Ag

Tom Stroup, president of the Satellite Industry Association, testified at the first hearing on the importance of the satellite industry.

“We are at a time of explosive innovation in the space industry, with over 7,000 active satellites on orbit today and plans for tens of thousands more through the end of the decade,” he said.

“Satellites today provide anytime, anywhere global connectivity to consumers, utilities, supply chain logistics providers, the IoT [internet of things] community, cruise and other ships, airlines, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Soon, we will be living in a world where an autonomous car can update its operating system while driving anywhere in the world via a satellite link, spectators at a football game will be able to connect to satellite and use augmented reality to revisit plays on smart glasses in real-time, and connected sensors on infrastructure will be able to determine potential failures as well as directly deploy satellite-connected UAVs to inspect even the most remote sites.

“Geospatial satellite data has not only transformed environmental monitoring, but also provides essential business analytics from monitoring remote infrastructure to analyzing supply chain performance. When integrated with geolocation data provided by Global Positioning System, AI can be used in real time to redirect resources and optimize output.”

Stroup also said satellites are critical for disaster response as they aren’t susceptible to damage, can communicate with terminals and networks on the ground, and can employ synthetic aperture radar that can see through clouds and map damaged regions while storms are still under way.

And, as the title of Latta’s bill would suggest, satellites can aid farmers practicing precision agriculture.

“Satellite technology is transforming agriculture across America. Satellite broadband, for instance, enables remote farms with livestock sensors, soil monitors and autonomous farming equipment in rural America, far beyond where terrestrial wireless and wireline can reach or make economic sense to deploy,” Stroup said. “Precision GPS technologies allow farmers to increase crop yield by optimizing use of fertilizer, pesticides, herbicides, and applying site-specific treatments to fields. Earth imaging satellites provide regular high-resolution imagery that allows farmers to determine when to plant, water or fertilize crops and can be used to provide crop yield estimates and monitor global food security. Satellite advances in weather forecasting help farmers prepare for drought, floods and other adverse weather conditions.”

Latta introduced his bill after those hearings, highlighting the need for reliable, fast internet for broad swaths of the economy.

“Farmers in rural Ohio also know that broadband connections are essential to their operations,” he said on the House floor. “After all, it helps deploy technologies that increase their productivity, produce higher yields and minimize operating costs. Today’s smart agriculture technology from autonomous tractors and distributed soil sensors rely on internet connections to share data. In fact, farmers use information in real time to make smarter decisions on how to optimize inputs in whether and when to plant and harvest. And when terrestrial or cellular networks are not available, satellite broadband steps in to make these technologies work.”

Latta noted Earth observation satellites also produce data useful for farmers, as they “help identify visual trends that need immediate attention.”

Dr. Simerjeet Virk, an assistant professor and extension precision agriculture specialist for the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at the University of Georgia-Tifton Campus, and a member of the International Society of Precision Agriculture, said connectivity continues to become more and more important for farmers.

“It’s not me taking a flash drive anymore to a tractor or sprayer or fertilizer spreader, it’s where I can sit in my office on my computer and I’m connected to all the displays in the tractor,” he said. “I can see in real-time on my phone which operator is doing what, and how much seeding they are applying.”

GPS accuracy with corrections has also improved immensely, Virk said. “We’re not working in feet and meters anymore, we’re working in sub-centimeter, sub-inch, plant-by-plant application,” he said. As those systems get more precise, farmers also need them to be repeatable, meaning they need access all the time.

“We still have a lot of areas where we don’t have connectivity,” he said. “Or, there are different ways of getting the GPS accuracy and a lot of times you have to be out there for a longer time before you can utilize the high accuracy systems. I think that’s where some of this [legislative push] is coming back to, is improving the overall connectivity between the systems.”

Possible Outcomes and Challenges

So, what are the problems and what could the FCC do about them?

Witnesses at the hearings had some ideas. Julie Zoller, head of global regulatory affairs for Amazon’s Project Kuiper, said the growth of the satellite industry is “straining the ability of regulators to process a wave of license applications under the current rules.” Kuiper is a $10 billion-plus planned constellation of 3,236 satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), with the first service expected to begin in late 2024.

Zoller did praise the FCC because it has “proposed rules that would provide more spectrum for non-geostationary satellite orbit [NGSO] services and greater clarity for spectrum sharing between NGSO systems. Not only will this ensure American leadership, but it will bring the benefits of investment, innovation and choice to customers.”

And, as her title would indicate, Zoller has to keep an eye on international rules as well. “Outdated rules are also a challenge outside of the United States. Many of the International Telecommunication Union rules for NGSO satellites favor incumbent technologies,” she said. “At the World Radiocommunication Conference later this year, it is essential that the U.S. set forth key priorities to ensure that the rules for NGSO systems, and satellites more generally, support the success of this U.S.-led technology and service.”

The WRC, held every three to four years to review or revise the international treaty governing the use of radio-frequency spectrum and geostationary and NGOS satellite orbits, is scheduled for this fall in Dubai. This year’s conference will consider a range of issues aimed at facilitating new terrestrial and space-based connection technologies, “including spectrum for next-generation mobile broadband systems, satellites, maritime and aeronautical services, and scientific applications,” according to the FCC.

Defense Issues

There’s more to the issue than just commercial interests, said Kari A. Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank, also testifying at the first hearing.

Bingen said building and launching satellites has gotten much cheaper and faster—satellites that were once the size of buses are now the size of “microwaves and loaves of bread” and can be produced in months or even days, not years.

These changes have drawn more interest from governments, Bingen said, as more than 85 nations are now operating in space, far beyond the longstanding space powers. China is pursuing the most expansive program, she said, aiming to take the space race lead by 2049.

“In our 2022 report, we highlighted China’s increasingly robust space capabilities, including advanced positioning, navigation and timing; satellite communications; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and missile warning; in-space logistics; and space situational awareness,” Bingen said. “China’s proficiency in areas like space-based imagery capabilities, paired with its advances in AI, means that it will be able to detect and locate U.S. forces from space in near-real time. China also has a robust arsenal of counterspace capabilities able to target U.S. space assets, ranging from cyberattacks, to reversible GPS and SATCOM jammers, to direct ascent anti-satellite missiles and co-orbital satellites that kinetically impact their targets.”

The use of those counterspace weapons isn’t hypothetical, she noted, as Russia targeted GPS, Starlink and Viasat in Ukraine with jamming and cyberattacks. “As space capabilities increasingly show their value to national security, especially in areas like imagery and communications, adversaries will seek to deny their use,” Bingen said.

On the commercial side, at least, Bingen said there are some things the FCC and other agencies could do, namely “strike the appropriate balance between burdensome regulation and market development.”

For instance, in the United States, space operators go to the FCC for spectrum, the FAA for launch, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for commercial remote sensing licenses, and the State Department and Commerce Department for issues relating to exportability.

Quoting the market analysis firm Quilty Analytics, she said, “The most difficult aspect of building a [LEO] broadband system is acquiring the spectrum, not building and launching satellites…navigating an onerous regulatory process—while also facing narrow profit margins and unforgiving business models of LEO broadband systems—can make it impossible for all but the largest, most well-resourced companies to obtain licenses.”

Pushing Forward

As for the latest legislative push, in the end, the FCC may discover it can’t do anything more to foster precision agriculture or other satellite broadband or PNT uses. Latta said he’ll keep trying.

“I’m committed to ensuring our farmers have the tools needed at their disposal to help increase productivity while minimizing costs,” he said. “This legislation is a good step forward in that mission.”

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The Pentagon has requested $1.3 billion in its fiscal 2024 budget for bolstering the GPS system, preparing new satellites for launch and moving to a new control system. The biggest changes will come with the new GPS IIIF satellites, still a few years away.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is continuing a major update for the GPS system, requesting $1.3 billion in the fiscal 2024 budget for GPS III satellite support and continuing the upgrade to the GPS III Follow On (GPS IIIF) enhanced satellite series and the next-generation control system. The upgrade will include greater accuracy and more military capability.

GPS III satellites, of which six are in orbit, already have a strengthened anti-jam capability and improved accuracy, along with the ability to tap into other civil GNSS signals, such as Europe’s Galileo. Planned upgrades will usher in a new search and rescue feature and a much more robust anti-jamming capability for troops in theater.

Especially with the fortified anti-jam capability, “this isn’t your grandmother’s GPS,” said Eric Brown, vice president of space mission strategy and advanced capabilities for GPS satellite builder Lockheed Martin.

The $1.3 billion fiscal 2024 request was significant enough for Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III to include it in his top-line highlights for the $842 billion fiscal 2024 defense budget. The funding, which must still be approved by Congress, continues support for GPS III satellites along with the planned upgrade, GPS IIIF.

The budgets for the program in fiscal 2022 and 2023 were $2 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively, including funding for three satellites in FY22 and two in FY23.

Lockheed Martin has completed work on its original GPS III 10-satellite contract and is under contract to provide up to 22 GPS IIIF satellites. The sixth GPS III satellite, GPS III Space Vehicle 06 (GPS III SV06), was launched in January, and the remaining satellites are in storage and waiting for the U.S. Space Force to call them up for launch.

The GPS III satellites continue to provide three-dimensional position, navigation and timing (PNT) for military and civilian users. They are backward compatible with earlier GPS satellites, but add the new Galileo-compatible signal for civilian users and the more powerful M-Code military signal.

Future Capability

In addition to the new L1C civil signal that’s compatible with Europe’s Galileo constellation, the GPS III satellites offer three times better accuracy, up to eight times improved anti-jamming capabilities and a modular design to allow new technologies and capabilities to be added in the future, according to Lockheed Martin. The GPS III signals are broadcast with greater accuracy due to enhanced atomic clocks.

GPS IIIF will add even more capability, starting with GPS IIIF SV11, likely to launch in late 2026. It will include:

• A Regional Military Protection (RMP) capability, which can boost anti-jamming ability in theater by up to 60 times, to make sure U.S. and allied forces can’t be denied access in hostile environments
• A laser retroreflector array that enhances accuracy
• A new search and rescue payload
• A fully digital navigation payload
• The new LM2100 Combat Bus, an enhanced satellite that provides even greater resiliency and cyber hardening, and improved spacecraft power, propulsion and electronics. Lockheed Martin’s Combat Bus will be available starting on GSP IIIF SV13, but it’s already in space as part of the Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit 5 satellite, or SBIRS GEO-5, which launched in May 2021 after five years of construction. SBIRS GEO-5 is part of the Space Force’s Overhead Persistent Infrared missile warning constellation, which detects missile launches, supports ballistic missile defense and collects signals intelligence.

OCX and MGUE

The Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) gives users access to M-Code signals, providing secure and accurate PNT capabilities to warfighters for ground, aircraft, ships, and weapons systems, enabling continued operations in the most contested environments. The fiscal 2024 budget funds the testing and lead platform integration of MGUE Increment 1, design activities to address its pending obsolescence, and development for MGUE Increment 2.

The funding request for the fiscal 2024 budget also supports the ongoing move from the current Operational Control Segment to the GPS Next Generation Operational Control System, or OCX, which will provide command, control and mission support for the GPS constellation, including GPS III and all legacy satellites.

Raytheon Intelligence & Space is the lead contractor for both MGUE and OCX, having been awarded the original OCX contract more than a decade ago and the new OCX 3F contract in the summer of 2021.

The company said the OCX has implemented 100% of the information assurance standards from the U.S. Department of Defense, which gives it “the highest level of cybersecurity protections of any DOD ground-based system. The cyber-secure system will have improved accuracy with better international availability as well as globally deployed modernized receivers with anti-jam capabilities.”

The OCX has another benefit: It can support more than twice as many satellites as the legacy version, which, according to Raytheon, means “those additional satellites will increase coverage in hard-to-reach areas such as urban canyons and mountainous terrain.”

The OCX program is divided into blocks: Initially, Block 0, 1 and 2. Block 0 was delivered in 2017 and supported the launch of the first GPS III satellite a year later, using the OCX Launch and Checkout System, or LCS. The LCS has been used to launch three more GPS satellites since then.

Block 1 will provide full operational capability, including control of legacy satellites, and Block 2, which will be delivered concurrently with Block 1, will add operational control for the new L1C civil signal as well as the updated M-Code signals. Beyond that is OCX Block 3F, which will upgrade the system to synchronize with GPS IIIF satellites and MGUE Increment 2.

According to Air Force budget documents, “the OCX Block 3F effort will develop solutions necessary to launch, command, control, and monitor GPS IIIF spacecraft and include advance collection and integration of RMP high-power regional Military Code (M-Code) signals, rapid warfighter effects, and support to GPS IIIF auxiliary payloads (including Search and Rescue (SAR), Nuclear Detonation (NUDET) Detection System (NDS).”

RMP and SAR

The RMP high-power M-Code signals are what would boost anti-jamming capabilities in theater by up to 60 times. Andre Trotter, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of Navigation Systems, said, “it is a dish, and so we do have the ability to beam or focus a signal into an area of responsibility or an area of interest.” That focused beam will be “giving you a higher gain effect at the same time.”

“This is a set of capabilities that are able to operate in that kind of contested, challenging environment in a way that we wouldn’t have been able to do with the constellation five years ago,” Brown said. “Andre’s team has really been driving this new set of capabilities to respond to the challenges that GPS is facing today.”

That capability will come online with GPS IIIF SV11, as will the new payload for aiding search and rescue operations.

“The search and rescue payload is actually our first international payload, and it is something we have partnered with the Canadian government and also NOAA,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Trotter said.

The SAR payload will tap into the Cospas-Sarsat system of search and rescue satellites to geolocate emergency transponders and provide coordinates to rapidly assist users in distress. “If you are stranded somewhere in the Pacific Ocean or Gulf of Mexico, etc., we have the ability to receive that signal and pass that through the proper channels,” Trotter said. “That capability itself will be starting with SV11, so that will be the first vehicle in GPS IIIF.

“It was a perfect partnership with NOAA, the Canadian government…to add that to our platform,” Trotter said. “And so, from a positioning standpoint, from an availability perspective, it is definitely an upgrade, and it made a lot of sense for us to do so.”

Added Flexibility

Additional capabilities will be coming down the line once the LM LM2100 Combat Bus comes online with GPS IIIF SV 13. It will add greater flexibility to the GPS constellation, company officials said.

“We have the ability to integrate payloads later in the integration cycle, at a lower cost,” Brown said. “Whether it be environments change or threats change, or we have to change capabilities of our satellites, we have the ability to do so later in the timeline. …”

Trotter said the LM2100 Combat Bus brings with it “a tremendous increase in SWaP, size, weight and power, that can be accommodated. And as a result, we’re able to look at a variety of additional auxiliary payloads that are creating certainly a lot of interest across the customer communities.” This provides “the opportunity for GPS truly to be a multi-mission platform versus some of the limitations that we’ve had historically.”

Brown said that could include PNT-related demonstration payloads or “one that we’ve spoken about publicly in the past, is the equipping of the GPS IIIF vehicles with crosslinks allowing GPS to effectively function as a geodata transport network.”

Satellites based on the LM2100 Combat Bus can also host the Augmentation System Port Interface, or ASPIN, allowing satellites to be serviced and upgraded while on orbit.

“ASPIN is the front-end docking adapter that Lockheed Martin developed to allow us to integrate auxiliary payloads later in the process, and even once the vehicle is on orbit,” Brown said. “We recognize that the demands change over the lifecycle of a space vehicle, and…there’s a tremendous need to adapt over a period of time. ASPIN provides that opportunity. So, we’re working very closely with Space Force and others on on-ramping ASPIN into a number of platforms.”

“An analogue that you may think about is in the air domain,” Trotter said. “Every C-130, every F-35 has the opportunity to load different mission packages onboard. And depending on what the mission is really requiring, you would provide a different outfit of capabilities of sensors, weapons and so forth. What we’re trying to do is bring that same mentality into the space domain where you are not limited in terms of capability to what you had at the point of launch, but rather to remove payloads on orbit and then to be able to equip others at the same time.”

The Stewards

The team at Lockheed Martin are the stewards of this technology, Brown said, an important responsibility.

“We should never be satisfied with what we’ve got today,” he said, “but really looking forward to how we can continue improving upon GPS, so that we can improve all of those things, the economy, the way that people transport, and certainly the military advantages that we have, over time.”

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Ansys says the latest version of its Orbit Determination Tool Kit (ODTK), which provides highly accurate spacecraft orbit estimates, is better suited to operating near the moon and in “cislunar space,” the region between the Earth and the moon where orbiting spacecraft are influenced by the gravity of both bodies.

“Spacecraft in that area behave quite differently,” Ansys Distinguished Engineer James Woodburn said in a Feb. 21 webinar. “…We have both the Earth and the moon gravity acting on things, and really, there’s no general solutions that exist” for estimating orbits.

Cislunar space is defined as space on the Earth side of the moon, or space above the altitudes used primarily for Earth-focused missions, such as by geosynchronous equatorial orbit (GEO) satellites.

Woodburn said traditional missions in cislunar space have relied heavily on tracking from Earth-based ground stations, but interest in other options is growing.

“Typically, missions in cislunar space have relied on Earth-based ground tracking for their navigation needs. However, there is a large increase in interest in going to lunar and cislunar space these days, and we have a limited number of ground stations that are capable of supporting those missions,” he said. “So, there’s a lot of interest in finding other ways to track these missions, including using our existing GNSS systems…using lunar-based ground stations, [and] optical navigation is something that’s of interest.

“People are basically looking for ways to track missions that either reduce or eliminate the involvement of [Earth] ground-based assets,” he said.

Version 7.6 of the ODTK includes the ability to perform Earth-based GNSS observations in cislunar or lunar space; supports moon-based GNSS systems; and extends measurement models to multi-body [Earth and moon] scenarios, he said.

“That’s really where the focus of the upgrades of version 7.6 of ODTK are. It’s looking out into the future, what are people looking at in terms of trade studies, what are the pieces of future lunar architectures that we need to support, and so forth?”

The upgrades build on previous attributes, “such as the ability to have lunar ground stations track lunar orbiters from the surface of the moon, to be able to estimate landers and their location after they’ve landed, and we even added a preliminary rover location estimation capability,” he said.

Previous versions of ODTK have seen operational use in lunar and cislunar space on a variety of missions, including IBEX, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, a small satellite studying the solar system boundary layer from an Earth orbit; LADEE, the Lunar Atmosphere and dust Environment Explorer, which orbits the moon; Beresheet, Israel’s ill-fated lunar lander; and the Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, which is flying using ODTK now; and several others.

Another mission was the groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope, which sits at the Lagrange 2 point in space. That isn’t cislunar space but has similar behavior, Woodburn said.

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Dee Ann Divis, the founding editor of Inside Unmanned Systems and contributing editor for Inside GNSS, died Nov. 22 at the age of 62, just days from her Dec. 19 birthday.

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, she spent most of her career in the Washington, D.C., area, becoming a recognized expert on satellite navigation position, navigation and timing. She began her career working with a company that sought to launch a private space shuttle before working with a number of publications on technology-related issues.

Glen Gibbons, the former editor of Inside GNSS, recalled how Dee Ann stepped in to write a Washington View column for GPS World in 1996.

“She had a background in space-related issues, understood satellites, launches, and such. But GNSS was still a mystery to her, as it was to most of the world’s citizens who have since come to depend on it. Nonetheless, Dee Ann plunged right in with a column discussing Russia’s GLONASS system and ICO Global Communications’ proposal to put navigation signals on Inmarsat satellites,” Gibbons said.

“However that first connection was made, by referral or advertisement, it was the beginning of a successful professional relationship that evolved into friendship during the 20-plus years that Dee Ann and I worked together.”

Divis was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and held a variety of high-profile science journalism jobs, including for UPI, Aerospace Daily, Al Jazeera and most recently for Navigation Outlook, which she founded and edited, providing deep reporting on GPS and PNT technologies.

“Dee Ann was, first of all, a quintessential journalist,” Gibbons said. “She brought to our trade publications all the training and values of the news journalism background that we shared: accuracy, fairness, proportionality, relevance, context, and so on. … Dee Ann was fearless in posing hard questions in public venues or in private to those responsible for GNSS policy or its operation and applications. Over the years, she developed a devoted following among readers who trusted and relied on her journalism, her good-hearted personality, and her deep knowledge of the GNSS field. They will miss her presence, her friendship, and her contributions. As will I.”

Abe Peck, who worked alongside Divis on Inside Unmanned Systems, said as founding editor she shaped it “into a leading definer of and advocate for the expanding world of autonomous vehicles and their essential technologies. Drawing on decades of experience, her coverage of regulation emerging from Washington, D.C., key states and global hot spots was especially astute.

“She also added insights about government rules and programs to sister publication Inside GNSS, detailing how proliferating satellite navigation systems were being impacted by policy issues. As a result, Dee Ann was justly honored for her journalism by the Society of Professional Journalists and other organizations. Her contributions endure.”

I spent some of my career competing with Dee Ann, as I was editor of what was then Unmanned Systems, a rival publication. After seeing her at numerous events and press conferences, I can attest to her fearlessness and nose for news. She seemed almost omnipresent at times. It always made me nervous when I attended an event and she wasn’t there, in case she had found something better; I hope now that she has.

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In the wake of the latest COP session on international climate change, and as the world continues to deal with the effects of a warming planet, researchers say more and better data can help ameliorate the damage and provide answers on how to respond to it.

GIS giant Esri hosted a webinar on Nov. 30 to discuss how imagery from satellites and drones, combined with artificial intelligence and cloud storage, can help hold United Nations members and other states accountable in creating a more sustainable world.

The answer: By generating more data, taking more measurements, making the data more accessible and putting it into products that are easy to understand by even non-scientists.

Panelist Steve Brumby, cofounder and CEO of Impact Observatory, said he sees a pending era of “radical transparency” where people have the information they need to understand the choices their governments make.

“In the next 12 months, we’re moving from a situation where anyone can expect to get an annual map from one year ago … to having essentially continuous monitoring,” Brumby said. “Anybody in the world should be able to say, here’s my area of interest … let me understand how this area is changing.”

He said anyone should be able to get information on how much land has been urbanized, how much coastland has eroded, and other measurements. Such data should no longer be just the realm of experts, but “there should be no barrier to people getting that type of data.”

Panelist “Stinger” Gerald Guala, a program scientist at NASA, said a record number of Earth-observing satellites means more data than ever.

“We’ve got a lot of new data sets coming in,” he said. “More data is always better than less data. … we’ve got a bigger fleet [of satellites] right now that address climate change directly than we’ve ever had before. We’re going to have a lot more information in the future.”

Panelist Amos Desjardins, the data inspection, enhancement and delivery section chief at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said his agency has about 7 petabytes of data, nine million frames of imagery, including one data set of a county in Wisconsin dating back to 1951.

“I always like to pivot and look backwards a little bit, and see where have we come from, what has changed over time?” he said. “Going forward, how can we collect imagery that will be useful?” The USDA maps the entire United States every other year (half one year, half the next) at resolutions as low as 15 centimeters, “and make that publicly available … so researchers and the general public can utilize that information.”

Brumby said the results from COP27, the 27th United Global Climate Change Conference, were disappointing to the conservation community in terms of practical results for fighting global warming.

With data from satellites, aircraft and on the ground, “things are changing faster than some of the models we hoped were correct not too long ago. The impacts on everyday life are already becoming undeniable, and there’s going to be a period where better decision making is not going to be some sort of luxury … it’s just going to be something people have to adapt to.”

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