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Mota Lava

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Mota Lava or Motalava is an island of the Banks group , in the north of Vanuatu . It forms a single coral system with the small island of Ra .

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58-470: The 2009 census figures give a population of 1640 inhabitants (Mota Lava + Ra ), which amounts to a population density of 67 people per km. With an area of 24 km (9.3 sq mi), Mota Lava is the fourth largest island in the Banks Islands, after Gaua , Vanua Lava and Ureparapara . It is the highest (411 m or 1,348 ft) of the eastern chain of islands, as well as the largest. Ra ,

116-408: A moving map display , or recorded or used by some other system, such as a vehicle guidance system. Although usually not formed explicitly in the receiver processing, the conceptual time differences of arrival (TDOAs) define the measurement geometry. Each TDOA corresponds to a hyperboloid of revolution (see Multilateration ). The line connecting the two satellites involved (and its extensions) forms

174-690: A deliberate error introduced into the GPS data that military receivers could correct for. As civilian GPS usage grew, there was increasing pressure to remove this error. The SA system was temporarily disabled during the Gulf War , as a shortage of military GPS units meant that many US soldiers were using civilian GPS units sent from home. In the 1990s, Differential GPS systems from the US Coast Guard , Federal Aviation Administration , and similar agencies in other countries began to broadcast local GPS corrections, reducing

232-450: A directive making GPS freely available for civilian use, once it was sufficiently developed, as a common good. The first Block II satellite was launched on February 14, 1989, and the 24th satellite was launched in 1994. The GPS program cost at this point, not including the cost of the user equipment but including the costs of the satellite launches, has been estimated at US$ 5 billion (equivalent to $ 10 billion in 2023). Initially,

290-510: A full complement of 24 satellites in 2027. The GPS project was launched in the United States in 1973 to overcome the limitations of previous navigation systems, combining ideas from several predecessors, including classified engineering design studies from the 1960s. The U.S. Department of Defense developed the system, which originally used 24 satellites, for use by the United States military, and became fully operational in 1993. Civilian use

348-566: A household survey with the exact location of every household in Vanuatu captured through Global Positioning System (GPS) handsets" and "the first time the VNSO used scanning technology to capture the information from the questionnaires into the computer database." This Vanuatu -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Global Positioning System The Global Positioning System ( GPS ), originally Navstar GPS ,

406-429: A liaison. The U.S. Department of Defense is required by law to "maintain a Standard Positioning Service (as defined in the federal radio navigation plan and the standard positioning service signal specification) that will be available on a continuous, worldwide basis" and "develop measures to prevent hostile use of GPS and its augmentations without unduly disrupting or degrading civilian uses". USA-203 from Block IIR-M

464-554: A manageable level to permit accurate navigation. During Labor Day weekend in 1973, a meeting of about twelve military officers at the Pentagon discussed the creation of a Defense Navigation Satellite System (DNSS) . It was at this meeting that the real synthesis that became GPS was created. Later that year, the DNSS program was named Navstar. Navstar is often erroneously considered an acronym for "NAVigation System using Timing And Ranging" but

522-457: A minimum, four satellites must be in view of the receiver for it to compute four unknown quantities (three position coordinates and the deviation of its own clock from satellite time). Each GPS satellite continually broadcasts a signal ( carrier wave with modulation ) that includes: Conceptually, the receiver measures the TOAs (according to its own clock) of four satellite signals. From the TOAs and

580-431: A receiver start-up situation. Most receivers have a track algorithm , sometimes called a tracker , that combines sets of satellite measurements collected at different times—in effect, taking advantage of the fact that successive receiver positions are usually close to each other. After a set of measurements are processed, the tracker predicts the receiver location corresponding to the next set of satellite measurements. When

638-404: A small island of 50 ha (120 acres), is located 270 meters (886 ft) off the southern coast of Mota Lava. It is attached to it by high corals that one can wade through at low tide. The climate on Mota Lava is humid tropical. The average annual rainfall exceeds 4000 mm. The island is subject to frequent earthquakes and cyclones. The island is served by Mota Lava Airport . Mota Lava

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696-635: Is a satellite-based radio navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31 . It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geolocation and time information to a GPS receiver anywhere on or near the Earth where there is an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. It does not require the user to transmit any data, and operates independently of any telephone or Internet reception, though these technologies can enhance

754-457: Is composed of at least five basaltic stratovolcanoes . Two of the cones, Vetman and Tuntog, are well-preserved. Vetman is a pyroclastic cone in the centre of the island with a breached summit crater. At the southwest end of the island, Tuntog is a composite cone with a 500 meters (1,640 feet) wide crater. Geochemical analysis shows that the island's lava has a similar composition to that from nearby Mota and Ureparapara , as well as lava from

812-514: Is owned and operated by the United States government as a national resource. The Department of Defense is the steward of GPS. The Interagency GPS Executive Board (IGEB) oversaw GPS policy matters from 1996 to 2004. After that, the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Executive Committee was established by presidential directive in 2004 to advise and coordinate federal departments and agencies on matters concerning

870-767: Is unhealthy For a more complete list, see List of GPS satellites On February 10, 1993, the National Aeronautic Association selected the GPS Team as winners of the 1992 Robert J. Collier Trophy , the US's most prestigious aviation award. This team combines researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory, the U.S. Air Force, the Aerospace Corporation , Rockwell International Corporation, and IBM Federal Systems Company. The citation honors them "for

928-495: The Doppler effect , they could pinpoint where the satellite was along its orbit. The Director of the APL gave them access to their UNIVAC I computer to perform the heavy calculations required. Early the next year, Frank McClure, the deputy director of the APL, asked Guier and Weiffenbach to investigate the inverse problem: pinpointing the user's location, given the satellite's. (At the time,

986-504: The navigation equations gives the position of the receiver along with the difference between the time kept by the receiver's on-board clock and the true time-of-day, thereby eliminating the need for a more precise and possibly impractical receiver based clock. Applications for GPS such as time transfer , traffic signal timing, and synchronization of cell phone base stations , make use of this cheap and highly accurate timing. Some GPS applications use this time for display, or, other than for

1044-520: The Earth's center) and the offset of the receiver clock relative to the GPS time are computed simultaneously, using the navigation equations to process the TOFs. The receiver's Earth-centered solution location is usually converted to latitude , longitude and height relative to an ellipsoidal Earth model. The height may then be further converted to height relative to the geoid , which is essentially mean sea level. These coordinates may be displayed, such as on

1102-641: The GPS and related systems. The executive committee is chaired jointly by the Deputy Secretaries of Defense and Transportation. Its membership includes equivalent-level officials from the Departments of State, Commerce, and Homeland Security, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NASA . Components of the executive office of the president participate as observers to the executive committee, and the FCC chairman participates as

1160-668: The GPS service, including new signals for civil use and increased accuracy and integrity for all users, all the while maintaining compatibility with existing GPS equipment. Modernization of the satellite system has been an ongoing initiative by the U.S. Department of Defense through a series of satellite acquisitions to meet the growing needs of the military, civilians, and the commercial market. As of early 2015, high-quality Standard Positioning Service (SPS) GPS receivers provided horizontal accuracy of better than 3.5 meters (11 ft), although many factors such as receiver and antenna quality and atmospheric issues can affect this accuracy. GPS

1218-714: The Global Positioning System (GPS) its 60th Anniversary Award, nominated by IAF member, the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). The IAF Honors and Awards Committee recognized the uniqueness of the GPS program and the exemplary role it has played in building international collaboration for the benefit of humanity. On December 6, 2018, Gladys West was inducted into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame in recognition of her work on an extremely accurate geodetic Earth model, which

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1276-474: The Navy TRANSIT system were too slow for the high speeds of Air Force operation. The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) continued making advances with their Timation (Time Navigation) satellites, first launched in 1967, second launched in 1969, with the third in 1974 carrying the first atomic clock into orbit and the fourth launched in 1977. Another important predecessor to GPS came from a different branch of

1334-568: The Navy was developing the submarine-launched Polaris missile, which required them to know the submarine's location.) This led them and APL to develop the TRANSIT system. In 1959, ARPA (renamed DARPA in 1972) also played a role in TRANSIT. TRANSIT was first successfully tested in 1960. It used a constellation of five satellites and could provide a navigational fix approximately once per hour. In 1967,

1392-595: The SLBM situation. In 1960, the Air Force proposed a radio-navigation system called MOSAIC (MObile System for Accurate ICBM Control) that was essentially a 3-D LORAN System. A follow-on study, Project 57, was performed in 1963 and it was "in this study that the GPS concept was born". That same year, the concept was pursued as Project 621B, which had "many of the attributes that you now see in GPS" and promised increased accuracy for U.S. Air Force bombers as well as ICBMs. Updates from

1450-520: The TOTs, the receiver forms four time of flight (TOF) values, which are (given the speed of light) approximately equivalent to receiver-satellite ranges plus time difference between the receiver and GPS satellites multiplied by speed of light, which are called pseudo-ranges. The receiver then computes its three-dimensional position and clock deviation from the four TOFs. In practice the receiver position (in three dimensional Cartesian coordinates with origin at

1508-602: The U.S. Navy developed the Timation satellite, which proved the feasibility of placing accurate clocks in space, a technology required for GPS. In the 1970s, the ground-based OMEGA navigation system, based on phase comparison of signal transmission from pairs of stations, became the first worldwide radio navigation system. Limitations of these systems drove the need for a more universal navigation solution with greater accuracy. Although there were wide needs for accurate navigation in military and civilian sectors, almost none of those

1566-442: The U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Perry , in view of the widespread growth of differential GPS services by private industry to improve civilian accuracy. Moreover, the U.S. military was developing technologies to deny GPS service to potential adversaries on a regional basis. Selective Availability was removed from the GPS architecture beginning with GPS-III. Since its deployment, the U.S. has implemented several improvements to

1624-416: The US government announced that the next generation of GPS satellites would not include the feature at all. Advances in technology and new demands on the existing system have now led to efforts to modernize the GPS and implement the next generation of GPS Block III satellites and Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX) which was authorized by the U.S. Congress in 2000. When Selective Availability

1682-504: The United States military. In 1964, the United States Army orbited its first Sequential Collation of Range ( SECOR ) satellite used for geodetic surveying. The SECOR system included three ground-based transmitters at known locations that would send signals to the satellite transponder in orbit. A fourth ground-based station, at an undetermined position, could then use those signals to fix its location precisely. The last SECOR satellite

1740-451: The axis of the hyperboloid. The receiver is located at the point where three hyperboloids intersect. It is sometimes incorrectly said that the user location is at the intersection of three spheres. While simpler to visualize, this is the case only if the receiver has a clock synchronized with the satellite clocks (i.e., the receiver measures true ranges to the satellites rather than range differences). There are marked performance benefits to

1798-642: The clocks on GPS satellites, as observed by those on Earth, run 38 microseconds faster per day than those on the Earth. The design of GPS corrects for this difference; because without doing so, GPS calculated positions would accumulate errors of up to 10 kilometers per day (6 mi/d). When the Soviet Union launched its first artificial satellite ( Sputnik 1 ) in 1957, two American physicists, William Guier and George Weiffenbach, at Johns Hopkins University 's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) monitored its radio transmissions. Within hours they realized that, because of

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1856-496: The distance from the satellite to the ground station. With the distance information collected from multiple ground stations, the location coordinates of any satellite at any time can be calculated with great precision. Each GPS satellite carries an accurate record of its own position and time, and broadcasts that data continuously. Based on data received from multiple GPS satellites , an end user's GPS receiver can calculate its own four-dimensional position in spacetime ; However, at

1914-451: The distance traveled between two position measurements drops below or near the random error of position measurement. GPS units can use measurements of the Doppler shift of the signals received to compute velocity accurately. More advanced navigation systems use additional sensors like a compass or an inertial navigation system to complement GPS. GPS requires four or more satellites to be visible for accurate navigation. The solution of

1972-407: The effect of both SA degradation and atmospheric effects (that military receivers also corrected for). The U.S. military had also developed methods to perform local GPS jamming, meaning that the ability to globally degrade the system was no longer necessary. As a result, United States President Bill Clinton signed a bill ordering that Selective Availability be disabled on May 1, 2000; and, in 2007 ,

2030-407: The highest-quality signal was reserved for military use, and the signal available for civilian use was intentionally degraded, in a policy known as Selective Availability . This changed on May 1, 2000, with U.S. President Bill Clinton signing a policy directive to turn off Selective Availability to provide the same accuracy to civilians that was afforded to the military. The directive was proposed by

2088-461: The island Mwotlap , locally spelled M̄otlap ( pronounced [ŋ͡mʷɔtˈlap] ). The language spoken by the inhabitants of Motalava is also called Mwotlap . It is the most widely spoken language in the Banks Islands , with about 2,100 speakers. The recently extinct Volow language also used to be spoken on Mota Lava. An early attempt to transcribe the native name, both for the island and

2146-663: The language, yielded a form Motlav . The name M̄ota Lava [ŋ͡mʷota laβa] (or in simple spelling, Motalava ) caught on after it started being used by 19th-century missionaries to the island. They borrowed that name from the language spoken on neighbouring Mota . Both the Mota and Mwotlap names of the island descend from a protoform * mʷota laβa in Proto-Torres-Banks , literally "large Mota ". A process of vowel deletion , regular in Mwotlap, explains how * [mʷotaˈlaβa]

2204-528: The most significant development for safe and efficient navigation and surveillance of air and spacecraft since the introduction of radio navigation 50 years ago". Two GPS developers received the National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize for 2003: GPS developer Roger L. Easton received the National Medal of Technology on February 13, 2006. Francis X. Kane (Col. USAF, ret.)

2262-440: The new measurements are collected, the receiver uses a weighting scheme to combine the new measurements with the tracker prediction. In general, a tracker can (a) improve receiver position and time accuracy, (b) reject bad measurements, and (c) estimate receiver speed and direction. The disadvantage of a tracker is that changes in speed or direction can be computed only with a delay, and that derived direction becomes inaccurate when

2320-481: The nuclear triad, also had requirements for a more accurate and reliable navigation system. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force were developing their own technologies in parallel to solve what was essentially the same problem. To increase the survivability of ICBMs, there was a proposal to use mobile launch platforms (comparable to the Soviet SS-24 and SS-25 ) and so the need to fix the launch position had similarity to

2378-514: The precision needed for GPS. The design of GPS is based partly on similar ground-based radio-navigation systems, such as LORAN and the Decca Navigator System , developed in the early 1940s. In 1955, Friedwardt Winterberg proposed a test of general relativity —detecting time slowing in a strong gravitational field using accurate atomic clocks placed in orbit inside artificial satellites. Special and general relativity predicted that

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2436-644: The reason for the ultra-secrecy at that time. The nuclear triad consisted of the United States Navy's submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) along with United States Air Force (USAF) strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Considered vital to the nuclear deterrence posture, accurate determination of the SLBM launch position was a force multiplier . Precise navigation would enable United States ballistic missile submarines to get an accurate fix of their positions before they launched their SLBMs. The USAF, with two thirds of

2494-408: The reference atomic clocks at the ground control stations; any drift of the clocks aboard the satellites from the reference time maintained on the ground stations is corrected regularly. Since the speed of radio waves ( speed of light ) is constant and independent of the satellite speed, the time delay between when the satellite transmits a signal and the ground station receives it is proportional to

2552-411: The south of the country, but differs from material erupted in central Vanuatu. The latter region has been affected by the subduction of a submerged, extinct island arc complex called the D'Entrecasteaux Zone. In early 19th-century texts and maps, Mota Lava was called Saddle Island , after the distinctive saddle-shaped profile it presents when seen from a boat offshore. The inhabitants of Mota Lava call

2610-404: The usefulness of the GPS positioning information. It provides critical positioning capabilities to military, civil, and commercial users around the world. Although the United States government created, controls, and maintains the GPS system, it is freely accessible to anyone with a GPS receiver. The GPS project was started by the U.S. Department of Defense in 1973. The first prototype spacecraft

2668-403: The user carrying a clock synchronized with the satellites. Foremost is that only three satellites are needed to compute a position solution. If it were an essential part of the GPS concept that all users needed to carry a synchronized clock, a smaller number of satellites could be deployed, but the cost and complexity of the user equipment would increase. The description above is representative of

2726-557: Was allowed from the 1980s. Roger L. Easton of the Naval Research Laboratory , Ivan A. Getting of The Aerospace Corporation , and Bradford Parkinson of the Applied Physics Laboratory are credited with inventing it. The work of Gladys West on the creation of the mathematical geodetic Earth model is credited as instrumental in the development of computational techniques for detecting satellite positions with

2784-420: Was concerned with the curving of the paths of radio waves ( atmospheric refraction ) traversing the ionosphere from NavSTAR satellites. After Korean Air Lines Flight 007 , a Boeing 747 carrying 269 people, was shot down by a Soviet interceptor aircraft after straying in prohibited airspace because of navigational errors, in the vicinity of Sakhalin and Moneron Islands , President Ronald Reagan issued

2842-485: Was destroyed in a launch failure). The effect of the ionosphere on radio transmission was investigated in a geophysics laboratory of Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratory , renamed to Air Force Geophysical Research Lab (AFGRL) in 1974. AFGRL developed the Klobuchar model for computing ionospheric corrections to GPS location. Of note is work done by Australian space scientist Elizabeth Essex-Cohen at AFGRL in 1974. She

2900-700: Was discontinued, GPS was accurate to about 5 meters (16 ft). GPS receivers that use the L5 band have much higher accuracy of 30 centimeters (12 in), while those for high-end applications such as engineering and land surveying are accurate to within 2 cm ( 3 ⁄ 4  in) and can even provide sub-millimeter accuracy with long-term measurements. Consumer devices such as smartphones can be accurate to 4.9 m (16 ft) or better when used with assistive services like Wi-Fi positioning . As of July 2023 , 18 GPS satellites broadcast L5 signals, which are considered pre-operational prior to being broadcast by

2958-595: Was inducted into the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame at Lackland A.F.B., San Antonio, Texas, March 2, 2010, for his role in space technology development and the engineering design concept of GPS conducted as part of Project 621B. In 1998, GPS technology was inducted into the Space Foundation Space Technology Hall of Fame . On October 4, 2011, the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) awarded

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3016-621: Was launched in 1969. With these parallel developments in the 1960s, it was realized that a superior system could be developed by synthesizing the best technologies from 621B, Transit, Timation, and SECOR in a multi-service program. Satellite orbital position errors, induced by variations in the gravity field and radar refraction among others, had to be resolved. A team led by Harold L. Jury of Pan Am Aerospace Division in Florida from 1970 to 1973, used real-time data assimilation and recursive estimation to do so, reducing systematic and residual errors to

3074-453: Was launched in 1978 and the full constellation of 24 satellites became operational in 1993. After Korean Air Lines Flight 007 was shot down when it mistakenly entered Soviet airspace, President Ronald Reagan announced that the GPS system would be made available for civilian use as of September 16, 1983; however, initially this civilian use was limited to an average accuracy of 100 meters (330 ft) by use of Selective Availability (SA),

3132-539: Was never considered as such by the GPS Joint Program Office (TRW may have once advocated for a different navigational system that used that acronym). With the individual satellites being associated with the name Navstar (as with the predecessors Transit and Timation), a more fully encompassing name was used to identify the constellation of Navstar satellites, Navstar-GPS . Ten " Block I " prototype satellites were launched between 1978 and 1985 (an additional unit

3190-515: Was seen as justification for the billions of dollars it would cost in research, development, deployment, and operation of a constellation of navigation satellites. During the Cold War arms race , the nuclear threat to the existence of the United States was the one need that did justify this cost in the view of the United States Congress. This deterrent effect is why GPS was funded. It is also

3248-636: Was shortened to [ŋ͡mʷɔtˈlap] . Like the rest of Vanuatu , Motalava was first settled around the 12th century  BCE by Austronesian navigators belonging to the Lapita culture . Archaeologists have found ancient obsidian in Mota Lava, Vanua Lava and Gaua , and Lapita pottery have been found in the island. The island was first sighted by Europeans during the Spanish expedition of Pedro Fernández de Quirós , from 25 to 29 April 1606. The island’s name

3306-556: Was then charted as Lágrimas de San Pedro (“St. Peter's Tears”, in Spanish ). 2009 Vanuatu Census The 2009 census of Vanuatu was conducted on 16 November 2009. The census revealed growth by an average of 2.3 percent a year since the previous census in 1999. The 2009 census was "the first time the Vanuatu National Statistics Office (VNSO) extensively used geographic information system (GIS) technology for

3364-520: Was ultimately used to determine the orbit of the GPS constellation. On February 12, 2019, four founding members of the project were awarded the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering with the chair of the awarding board stating: "Engineering is the foundation of civilisation; ...They've re-written, in a major way, the infrastructure of our world." The GPS satellites carry very stable atomic clocks that are synchronized with one another and with

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