GPS (Navstar Global Positioning System)
node
The United States military navigation system that became global civil infrastructure. The first Block I satellite launched on 22 February 1978; initial operational capability was declared in December 1993 and full operational capability on 27 April 1995, with a nominal constellation of 24 satellites in six medium-Earth-orbit planes. Civil use was deliberately degraded for two decades by Selective Availability, an intentional error injected into the civil signal, which the United States switched off on 1 May 2000 — improving typical civil accuracy roughly tenfold overnight and directly enabling consumer navigation, precision agriculture and vehicle telematics as commercial industries. The system is funded and operated by the US Space Force, its civil service is provided free worldwide by standing policy, and its most economically load-bearing output is not position but time: the atomic-clock timescale it broadcasts is the reference that synchronises telecommunications networks, power grids and financial timestamping. Not a place.
A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.
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Timeline
No dated observations are stored for this object. Atlas shows what was observed and when — it does not infer a history.
Connections · 1
Assembled narrative · 1
Assembled from 24 blocks · 1 evidence · 17 related
- Story
- The United States military navigation system that became global civil infrastructure. The first Block I satellite launched on 22 February 1978; initial operational capability was declared in December 1993 and full operational capability on 27 April 1995, with a nominal constellation of 24 satellites in six medium-Earth-orbit planes. Civil use was deliberately degraded for two decades by Selective Availability, an intentional error injected into the civil signal, which the United States switched off on 1 May 2000 — improving typical civil accuracy roughly tenfold overnight and directly enabling consumer navigation, precision agriculture and vehicle telematics as commercial industries. The system is funded and operated by the US Space Force, its civil service is provided free worldwide by standing policy, and its most economically load-bearing output is not position but time: the atomic-clock timescale it broadcasts is the reference that synchronises telecommunications networks, power grids and financial timestamping. Not a place.
- Knowledge
- Global navigation satellite systems
- GPS (Navstar Global Positioning System)
- Connections
- Global navigation satellite systems
- The first Navstar GPS satellite launches
- GPS reaches full operational capability
- Selective Availability is switched off
- A GPS ground-system error disrupts timing receivers worldwide
- Upstream and downstream in space accounting
- Orbital shells as distinct economic regimes
- GPS (Navstar Global Positioning System)
- Galileo
- BeiDou Navigation Satellite System
- GNSS timing dependency
- The first Navstar GPS satellite launches
- GPS reaches full operational capability
- Selective Availability is switched off
- Galileo declares initial services
- BeiDou-3 completes deployment and enters global service
- Evidence
- Supports the GPS milestone dates (first Block I launch 1978, full operational capability 1995, Selective Availability discontinued 2000) and the standing policy that the civil GPS signal is provided worldwide free of direct user charge. V55 verification basis: gps.gov was not retrievable in this session; dates are stated from author knowledge and require confirmation.
Observed changes · 0
No public Signals are attached to this object. Signals show what changed and when it was observed — never a direction or a rank.
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/atlas?object=SYSTEM_GPS&experience=SYSTEM_GPS