Navstar

Series of 24 active satellites and 3 reserve navigation satellites that complete the Global Positioning System (Global Positioning System, GPS). They allow navigators to know their position on Earth with an error/margin of 10 m, speed with an error of up to 0.1 m/s, precise time to the millionth of a second. They are at an altitude of about 20,200 km, and complete one orbit of Earth in 12 hours. On Labor Day (May 1) 1973, twelve Pentagon military officials met and discussed the creation of a Defense Navigation Satellite System (DNSS). It was at that meeting that "the true synthesis of GPS creation." Later that year, the DNSS program was named Navstar. With the individual satellites associated with the name Navstar (as well as its predecessors Transit and Timation), a more fully encompassing name was used to identify the constellation of NAVSTAR satellites: Navstar-GPS, later shortened to simply GPS.