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The Navy Navigation Satellite System – A GPS Precursor

by Hans|Published April 23, 2012|1 comment

us3172108 — Satellite navigation was first described in U.S. Patent 3,172,108 (1965).

A couple of years ago, I surveyed the origins of the GPS system in a Sputnik-inspired satellite navigation system that operated using Doppler shift measurements of satellite signals. The TRANSIT or NAVSAT system yielded 100m – 400m location accuracy (accounts vary).

The system included several firsts: the first nuclear powered satellite (Transit 4A) as well as the first satellite damaged in a nuclear blast (Transit 4B damaged by the United States Starfish Prime high-altitude nuclear test in 1962).

Transit was increasingly overshadowed by the superior performance of GPS and ceased operation in 1996.

Here’s a very informative Navy training video dating back to 1967 providing an excellent overview of the system and how it worked.

AUTHOR

Hans

Hans G. Schantz is the Principal Scientist of Geeks and Nerds Corporation (GaN). He was co-founder and CTO of Q-Track Corporation until GaN's acquisition of Q-Track in 2019. Co-inventor of NFER indoor location technology, he has more than 40 U.S. patents to his credit. He is the author of The Art and Science of Ultrawideband Antennas, The Biographies of John Charles Fremont, and the science fiction thriller, The Hidden Truth, available free through Kindle Unlimited. The sequel, A Rambling Wreck, was a finalist for the Conservative Libertarian Fiction Alliance 2018 Book of the Year, and third in the series is The Brave and the Bold. His latest work is The Wise of Heart, an illustrated courtroom drama of biological science versus transgenderism that updates the Scopes Monkey Trial for the twenty-first century. Dr. Schantz earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Texas at Austin, and explains his unique solution to wave particle duality at the Fields & Energy Substack.

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