How GPS works: how your phone knows where you are
How a GPS satellite knows exactly where it is
A GPS satellite tells your phone where it is, to within a few metres, while it races around the Earth at almost 4 km every second. Nothing up there tells it where it is. So who does?
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1
Your phone takes each satellite at its word: "I am here, and this is the time." Yet satellite 7 races around the Earth at almost 4 km every second.
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2
It cannot ask anyone up there. So how does it know its own place, to within a few metres?
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