Eli5 How companies use satellite

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eli5 How do companies use satellites

Company’s like geocaching or Snapchat use satellites to track where we are. Do they send their own satellites or do they buy information from an already existing one?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The U.S. GPS satellites are owned by the government. They are free to use for civilian use. All you need is a receiver. The civilian GPS signal is purposely degraded to introduce error. Usually the accuracy is plus or minus 30 feet. It’s usually better than that, but that is the standard. Aircraft, military, and professional survey grade GPS is accurate within centimeters.

Anonymous 0 Comments

All that information is already supplied by your cell phone’s GPS. Any photos you take with the phone will have that location data encoded in the metadata. The apps and companies themselves do not need to supply it directly.