Freitag, 22. Mai 2009

The U.S. GPS may have difficulty from 2010 on

"It is uncertain whether the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some military operations and some civilian users could be adversely affected." stated in a report released on April 7, 2009, by US Government Accountability Office (GAO). According to GAO's report the reason is the failure of the US Air Force to successfully complete the GPS IIF satellite program that is three years behind schedule now. It's likely to have old satellites starting to fail and service quality of GPS degrading in 2010.

Well, it sounds like a tragedy to the current GPS navigator users and all business using GPS based location information. But, on the other hand, it's also a positive news for other global positioning systems, like the European Galileo and the Chinese Compass projects, to come into the play.