If GPS tells you where You are then what tells Satellites where they are? Satellite Operators Team To Avoid Collisions (Aviation Week) [SatNews]

* This story brought up a good question from me: If GPS Satellites tell us where we are then what tells them where they are? Or any satellite for that matter? Satellites get “parked” in Geostationary Orbit when launched (for the Geo Satellites) and maintain their parking space … somehow? But do they know where other satellites (and other space junk) are? Can they avoid collisions? (Joke: Satellite-to-Uplink_Station, hold please…, I’ve gotta jump out of the way of this other satellite thats flying way off course and is about to cream me! Be back in a minute…)

http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=406168219

Satellite Operators Team To Avoid Collisions (Aviation Week)

[SatNews] A new cooperative data tool will help keep geostationary commercial communications satellites from colliding or causing signal interference, a service its initiators hope to extend to government spacecraft and satellites in low Earth orbit as well.

Spurred in part by the February 2009 collision between an active Iridium spacecraft and a defunct Russian military-communications satellite, the new Space Data Center automatically plots conjunctions in the orbits of satellites owned by participating operators and alerts their control centers to the problem.

The non-profit organization that runs the system, which is currently limited to 126 satellites in geostationary orbit, is already in talks with U.S. Strategic Command on trading the data it has for better space-debris ephemera and a heads-up when one of the commercial spacecraft in the system is in the way of a military spacecraft.

(more at the link above)

* See also: How Do GPS Satellites Know Their Location? 

http://geology.com/nasa/how-do-gps-satellites-know-their-location/

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