“The University of Texas Hacked Starlink’s Signal So It Can Be Used as a GPS Alternative” How? What do they mean by this?
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GPS satellites emit their orbital data, a time signal, and strings of characters in a known pattern. GPS receivers listen for these signals and note which letters in the string arrive at a particular moment.
Say four GPS satellites emit just the alphabet, in order. At your current position, at a particular instant, your receiver receives the letters “M, M, M, M.”
The GPS knows how how far away from each satellite it must be to receive “M, M, M, M”, and from these distances, calculates your position.
Now walk a few paces in a particular direction. This time the receiver receives “M,N,L,M.” The change in distance from each satellite caused one string to arrive a little later, and another string to arrive a little sooner than the others. Thus the GPS updates its position.
Starlink satellites emit precisely timed beacon signals, which are known strings of characters. The satellites’ precise orbital data is also known. These pieces of information can be combined to calculate position in a way that is similar to GPS.
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