NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
GPS EOW rollover
From: Richard B. Emerson
Date: 1999 Aug 26, 10:06 PM
From: Richard B. Emerson
Date: 1999 Aug 26, 10:06 PM
FYI - the enclosed was posted to CANSPACE list. Rick S/V One With The Wind, Baba 35 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ U. S Air Force ONLINE NEWS 25 August 1999 WASHINGTON -- If it's true that no news is good news, then the Global Positioning System rollover late Aug. 21 was the best of news for the Air Force. Air Force officials confirm the GPS, including the 27-satellite constellation and its network of ground support stations operated by Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., continued functioning normally before, during and after its date rollover which occurs every 20 years. This event is similar to the broader rollover for other computer systems which will occur in Y2K. The GPS, which counts time in epochs of 1,024 weeks vs. using traditional solar years, rolled over to 0000 for the first time since 1980, when the system's internal clock began. Air Force officials confirm the GPS, including the 27-satellite constellation and its network of ground support stations operated by Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., continued functioning normally before, during and after the rollover. The watch began when experts at AFSC uploaded the new almanac containing week 0000 information Aug. 19 at 6 p.m. EDT. Air Force users began testing their receivers that evening, with no failures reported. Saturday evening was much the same following the approximate 8 p.m. EDT rollover. "The GPS uses composite readings from 230 atomic clocks around the world to track absolute and relative time down to a nanosecond," said Bill Lubera, Air Force Materiel Command Year 2000 Program Office. GPS receivers, he explained, are used for everything from local- and wide-area networks to bank automated teller machine systems, public utilities, radar nets and cellular phone towers to synchronize transactions and transmissions. If GPS users worldwide detected any anomalies, they reported them to controllers at the GPS User Support Center, Colorado Springs, Colo., and the GPS Joint Program Office, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif. The data was then passed to the Air Force Fusion Center at Standard Systems Group at Maxwell Air Force Base, Gunter Annex, Ala., for correlation with information being received from other Air Force units. The GPS data was then reported to the Air Force Operations Center at the Pentagon. (Courtesy HQ Air Force Materiel Command and Standard Systems Group Public Affairs)
