100
Quantum alternative to GPS navigation will be tested on US military spaceplane
(theconversation.com)
this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
100 points (97.2% liked)
Technology
74114 readers
2883 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's not really an alternative to GPS. It has no idea where on earth you are, it simply accurately tracks your motion through the world but it has no idea where that motion is occurring, you have to start off with a known starting point, then it tracks your motion to work out your current location. But it is only as accurate as the accuracy of the starting point, if that's off by 400 m then so will be the result.
It's basically a very good inertial navigation system, plus this isn't the first time it's been tested it's been tested on ships and planes before.
It's not going to replace GPS for commercial purposes because there's very few scenarios where you don't have a GPS up link. But it'll be useful is in situations where that's not possible like on submarines or yeah in space. It isn't like your car is ever going to use this though.
Great for missiles
And in today's world, drones.
As I said the equipment is pretty big, like the size of a small refrigerator, so it's going to need to get reduced quite extensively before it's really used in anything like that.