GPS Innovation Alliance celebrates NASA’s 60th anniversary

Association recognizes key role the agency has played in furthering GPS.

The GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA), an organization dedicated to furthering GPS innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship, commends NASA — the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration — on its momentous 60th anniversary. GPSIA celebrates the occasion by recognizing the vital role NASA has played in furthering and facilitating the growth of GPS around the world.

NASA has long been an integral supporter of GPS technologies, from its origins in the first space shuttle program, to the launch of the International Space Station (ISS), to the recent announcement of plans to develop an artificial intelligence-based GPS for space.

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Throughout its history, NASA has played a critical role in the success of expanding GPS systems. NASA manages the Navigator GPS receiver, developed by its Goddard Space Flight Center, which has pushed GPS satellites out of lower earth orbit and beyond to enable high altitude applications and track weaker and more rural GPS signals with increased accuracy.

The Global Differential GPS System (GDGPS), a network of more than 350 GPS monitoring stations from 200 contributing organizations in 80 countries developed and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, provides an unparalleled combination of real time positioning accuracy and availability and acts as the largest network providing global, multiply-redundant, real time coverage of all GPS satellites at all times.

“GPS contributes immeasurable value to our economy and is used in almost every industry sector,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. “It is crucial for our way of life on Earth — the way we communicate, navigate, conduct banking transactions, and so much more rely on our GPS systems. As NASA looks to its future endeavors in exploration and discovery, GPS will remain a cornerstone of technology to accomplish its missions. NASA looks forward to its continued work with the GPS Alliance.”

With the establishment of the National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing in 2004 and other governing bodies since, NASA has also acted as a thought leader on policy trends in the field, advising on and advocating for protections of GPS , one of the world’s most important and ubiquitous public resources.

“The alliance, on behalf of its members and the GNSS industry, congratulates NASA on six decades of cutting-edge innovation and wishes the agency continued success for many decades to come,” said J. David Grossman, executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance. “As one of the most recognizable technologies in the world, GPS supports navigation, public safety, financial transactions and utilities and varied industries worldwide. We applaud NASA for its unwavering commitment to scientific innovation and to GPS around the globe, now and in the future.”

The GPS Innovation Alliance recognizes the ever increasing importance of GPS and other GNSS technologies to the global economy and infrastructure and is firmly committed to furthering GPS innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. The GPS Innovation Alliance seeks to protect, promote and enhance the use of GPS.