NASA took on a Herculean precision positioning task that culminated Oct. 20 with a spacecraft sampling the surface of an asteroid from a 5-meter area — a NASA first. The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, launched on Sept. 8, 2016, spent two years mapping the Bennu asteroid to determine the best site for removing the sample. Bennu was selected because of its near-Earth... read more
Connected transportation company Geotab has unveiled Geotab Keyless, a platform solution that integrates a secured digital key function with a comprehensive and data-driven fleet management product. Announced at the company’s third annual Geotab Mobility Connect conference, this combined solution is enabling a new class of car sharing by allowing public, corporate, leasing and government fleets to better analyze, pool, utilize... read more
Telematics company SkyBitz has announced a strategic technology partnership with fleet logistics solutions provider Coretex. The partnership combines Coretex sensor-based refrigeration solution and cloud-based software platform with SkyBitz trailer tracking technology to create a complete solution for businesses needing both powered and non-powered asset tracking. With the partnership, food, pharmaceutical and retail customers can have total visibility into the status... read more
“Seen & Heard” is a monthly feature of GPS World magazine, traveling the world to capture interesting and unusual news stories involving the GNSS/PNT industry. No pilgrims needed aboard The autonomous Mayflower trimaran launched Sept. 16 from Plymouth, England, on a mission to traverse oceans and gather vital environmental data, guided by Veripos GNSS and inertial measurement units from iXBlue and Silicon... read more
The aborted launch of the fourth GPS III satellite has sparked an investigation into the SpaceX Falcon 9’s Merlin engine. With only two seconds before launch, SpaceX stopped the scheduled launch of the fourth GPS III satellite on Oct. 2. Tim Dunn of NASA’s Launch Services Program said at an Oct. 16 briefing that the engines had undergone significant testing... read more
A new white paper sponsored by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation (RNT Foundation) discusses the need and implementation of a reliable and resilient national timing architecture that will include space-based assets. This system-of-systems architecture — GNSS, terrestrial eLoran broadcasts and fiber — is essential to underpin today’s technology and support development of tomorrow’s systems, according to the executive summary... read more
On Oct. 16, Rodrigo da Costa took up his duties as executive director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA), soon to become the EU Space Programme Agency. He was elected by the GSA Administrative Board on Sept. 15 and met with the ITRE Committee of the European Parliament on Oct. 12. Da Costa, a Portuguese national who has worked in... read more
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