AFRL to Test Multi-Orbit Satellite Navigation Written 11 April 2022
Artist's impression of a GPS Block IIIA satellite in orbit. | Credit: USAF; Wikipedia; Public Domain
Space News reported, “The Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3), an experiment funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory, will fly to a geostationary Earth orbit in 2023 and will be used to augment the positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services currently provided by GPS satellites.” Such navigation “could be significant as the Pentagon fears that signals from GPS satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) could be jammed or disrupted during a conflict.” The piece quotes Joanna Hinks, NTS-3 deputy program manager at AFRL, as saying, “We wanted to look at how you use a constellation that is truly a hybrid architecture.”
Full Story (Space News)