After several years of anticipation, the planned earth-girdling network of five global navigation satellite system (GNSS) constellations is taking tangible form in space. Two of them–America’s GPS and Russia’s Glonass–are already fully operational. Glonass reached that goal in 2009, joining the pioneering GPS, which achieved that status in the 1980s. The other three: Europe’s Galileo, China’s Compass and India’s regional navigation satellite system (IRNSS), have each begun launches of their own GPS-like constellations, with their expected completion dates forecast in the 2018 to 2022 period. Read More
