It’s going to be a few years and then some before we can take advantage of L5. And when the time comes it may require an investment in new hardware, even if the receiver you have today claims to be compatible. Nevertheless, it will be a boon to the high-precision user.

A functioning Galileo system may still be some years away – current projections that plan on having a full satellite constellation in orbit within five years may prove wishful thinking. Nevertheless, Galileo can mean nothing but good things for survey and construction, and the sooner it gets here, the better.

Japan’s satellite-based augmentation system has brought meter-level accuracy to that region, which is great news for mapping. But there are even centimeter-level options available that take advantage of Japan’s MSAS.

The use of GPS and GNSS technology for precision agriculture hasn’t changed much in years. But lately, supplemental technology has been showing up more frequently down on the farm.

I covered this subject a while back, but I think it’s time to revisit it. Personal navigation devices (PNDs) are still selling like crazy. If you don’t have one, someone you know does. Tens of millions of these things are being sold per year.

There has been a lot of activity on both the civilian and military sides of GPS/GNSS these past few weeks. Instead of a central theme to this newsletter, I’m going to comment on three points of interest: a DoD directive regarding position, navigation, and timing; PRN32; and some new product developments.

With nearly 60 GPS engineers and scientists, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) is one of the biggest GPS R&D centers in the world today. It operates as a division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), which manages the lab for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

It appears the US Department of Transportation has bought the Nationwide Differential GPS system (NDGPS) another year. The FY09 Presidential Budget Request was released earlier this week, and it contains a line item in the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) budget for NDGPS in the amount of $4.6M for operations and maintenance of the current system until October 2009. There is no budget item for the planned build-out of NDGPS. The budget request is subject to approval by Congress, but most likely this will go through.