The International GNSS Service MGEX Campaign
GPS is almost 40 years old. While mass consumer use of GPS began only within the past decade or so, GPS was “born” during the Labor Day weekend of 1973, when about a dozen military officers and industry analysts under the leadership of Brad Parkinson met to consolidate the concept for a single satellite-based navigation system for the U.S. Department of Defense. Their proposal for NAVSTAR GPS was approved on December 22, 1973. The first satellite to be launched under the GPS program, on July 14, 1974, was the Naval Research Laboratory’s Navigation Technology Satellite (NTS) 1.