On September 1, 1983, Korean Air Flight 007 departed Anchorage Airport, Alaska, USA at 1:00 p.m. en route from New York to Seoul, South Korea. 246 passengers and 23 cabin crew were traveling inside. The commander set the autopilot to constant magnetic bearing, but with an error that sent the plane further north over the Kamchatka Peninsula, crossing the frigid Sea of Okhotsk over the island of Sakhalin and heading straight for the Soviet fleet’s base in the Pacific, Vladivostok. headed for . The pilot ignored his situation and was surprised to see a fighter abruptly abort its course and position itself right next to the cockpit.
With six years to go before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Cold War was experiencing one of its most tense moments. The Soviet command had dispatched two Su-15 and two Mig-23 fighters to intercept the Korean plane. “I could see two rows of lighted windows,” Soviet pilot Colonel Gennady Osipovitch said in a 1998 interview with CNN. “I was wondering if it was a civil aircraft. Military cargo planes do not have these windows. I wondered what kind of plane that was, but I didn’t have time to think. I had a job to do. I started pointing it out [al piloto] in international code. I informed him that he had violated our airspace. He didn’t answer”. Two missiles tore the airliner apart and threw the remains of its hull into the cold water. All passengers and crew died instantly. The tragedy shook the world and strained the already troubled relationship between the US and the Soviet Union – a US -Congressman was traveling on Flight 007 KA.
As a result, to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future, US President Ronald Reagan made a decision that changed the world as we know it. It made available to the public, free of charge, a military technology that had previously given the Americans the strategic advantage: GPS. With this navigation system, Flight 007 would have reached KL Seoul without deviating from its route.
A global positioning system oddly conceived with another Soviet act: the launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957. MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) researchers warned that the frequency of detection of the beeps emitted by the Russian satellite was decreasing anyway it moved away (through the Doppler effect), and that this phenomenon could be used to determine the location, speed, route, and altitude of any vehicle on the Earth’s surface. In 1959 the US Navy already had its Transit system, the forerunner of GPS.
Image of the Garmin inReach Mini 2 device, a navigation device that has been involved in more than 8,000 rescue missions.
What is GPS?
GPS technology currently moves more than 85,000 million euros. If it failed tomorrow, the banks would collapse, commercial air, land, and sea shipping would be paralyzed, and the great grain crop could not be harvested. It is the world clock with atomic precision. Until the year 2000, civilians didn’t have a totally free GPS, but today they are the eyes of our society. For this reason, both Russia with its Glonass system and the European Union with Galileo have their own satellite navigation systems.
The Global Positioning System (GPS) system is maintained by a small detachment of US Air Force technicians known as Team Blackjack, who operate 31 satellites from Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado. The satellites orbit the earth twice a day in fixed orbits at a speed of 11,000 kilometers per hour and at an altitude of 19,300 kilometers and emit signals 24 hours a day that are picked up by GPS receivers. Through trilateration (the receiver measures the distance to each of the acquired satellites over time), the GPS device can inform the user of its exact position on the planet. The more satellites the device picks up, the more reliably it measures latitude, longitude, altitude, time and speed on the go.
With the advent of smartphones and their multiple applications, this system has become so widespread in leisure, work, and mobile applications that it has simply become an invisible routine. Little is known about their use.
Thanks to GPS you not only know where you are going, where you are going and how long it will take to get there, but you can also get practical information.Benjamin Ilmoni
What can GPS do besides telling you where you are on your travels?
It is your first time in Bangkok and you want to go to the Royal Grand Palace from your hotel. Almost without thinking, he looks for the Google Maps application on his phone and it turns out that it is no more than a 10-minute walk away. If it’s not a hot day in the Thai capital, instead of taking a taxi or tuktuk, decide to walk quietly, knowing you won’t get lost. The most obvious function of GPS, which is used on a daily basis, especially when traveling, is navigation between two points. But it has many others.
- Connect with the environment. Thanks to GPS, not only do you know where you’re going, where you’re going and how long it will take you to get there, you can also get practical information such as: B. the location of hospitals, police stations, hotels and of course the best rated Thai restaurants on the Internet.
- Stay in touch with the group. Continuing with the example, you might want to meet up with a travel companion at the huge palace complex in Bangkok. Whatsapp, For example, you can share your real-time location with one or more people for up to eight hours by enabling the Send Real-Time Location feature. This is particularly useful when you are going on a hiking or cycling tour with a very diverse group and you need to know the situation and estimated time of arrival of each member.
- Travel safer. WhatsApp real-time location is a wonderful tool to stay in touch and be located. Other mobile applications like CAIRN can also send start and end messages of the route, manage the battery so it doesn’t run out during navigation and inform about his reservation or send “I’m fine” messages to relatives and contacts in outdoor conditions without cell coverage .
- Know where the kids are. The GPS can give you extra security thanks to the tracking devices. AngelSens, for example, is a device designed for children with special needs and is currently used to monitor their activity and location, and to communicate with them in an emergency. There are also collars with GPS tracking for dogs and cats. In fact, with tracking devices it is also possible to check the location of your skis or bike in the event of loss or theft.
- Receive timely notifications. If after your stay in Bangkok you decide to travel to the south of Thailand, you might be interested in downloading the tsunami warning application in order not to go on an adventure like The Impossible. The program monitors earthquakes and tsunamis around the world and alerts its users via SMS, voice and email. Thanks to GPS receivers installed on the ground, the authorities can determine the epicenter of an earthquake, its magnitude and the risk of a tsunami in order to warn the affected population of the consequences in good time.
- Asking for help, even unknowingly. It can also be used as a passive security element where you don’t need to be aware of the cellphone. The EVO21 smart helmet for cyclists, for example, detects falls by the cyclist and, after 90 seconds of inactivity on the part of the user, sends an SOS with the exact location to selected mobile contacts. A fantastic feature, especially if you have an off-road accident and visibility is poor.
Smartphone or GPS device?
Both mobile phones and smartwatch wristwatches work as excellent navigators, although they differ from Garmin-type GPS devices in that their system is usually A-GPS (Assisted Global Positioning System) and they don’t connect directly to satellites, but rather the information is collected by the repeater or the WiFi network. As long as you use the GPS functions in an area with sufficient coverage, such as B. in cities, the cell phone will serve you well. The problem arises when traveling to remote regions where phone companies typically don’t have users.
In such circumstances, a GPS device that contacts the satellites directly is more reliable. Of course, the accuracy of the device depends on atmospheric conditions (clouds interfere with satellite signals) and the surrounding relief and vegetation (forests, large peaks, etc.). But in general, GPS devices are a better choice if your trip takes place outdoors and in sparsely populated areas: they are more resistant to bad weather such as dust or rain, they do not drain the battery in low temperatures, already a much cheaper kind abroad of browsing than mobile, and if it interests you, your browsing is private.
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