Will retired satellites be revived to fill GPS gap? | Aviation International News

Will retired satellites be revived to fill GPS gap?

Testifying before Congress in May, Stanford University professor Brad Parkinson–the chief architect of GPS and the original GPS program manager before his

By John Sheridan

June 30, 2009

Testifying before Congress in May, Stanford University professor Brad Parkinson–the chief architect of GPS and the original GPS program manager before his retirement from the USAF–echoed the concern of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that there will be insufficient backup satellites to fill gaps in the constellation before the DOD’s forecast 2014 launches of its next-generation GPS III units. (see AIN, June, page one.)

But Parkinson was more specific than the GAO. Noting that the DOD expects to fill the gap with Boeing-built Block IIF satellites produced under a troubled and costly program that was three years late, he pointed out that those units are still untried, their design and parts are obsolete and they may have “further congenital defects,” since their ongoing production program “is still overrunning its budget.”

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