Space Is Hard | There Is No GPS in Space

(slow techno music)

Sure, you can pull up an app and get around Earth,

but directions in space are a lot harder.

Our guide for the stars is the Deep Space Network.

A collection of antenna arrays in California,

Australia, and Spain.

Everything from student project satellites

to the New Horizons Probe meandering through

the Kuiper belt depends on it to stay oriented.

An ultra-precise atomic clock on Earth

times how long it takes for a signal to get

from the network to a space craft and back.

And navigators use that to determine the craft's position.

But here's the problem:

the Deep Space Network is basically hotel WiFi.

Too many people are on it,

and it's pretty slow once you get way out into space.

The solution?

NASA'S working to equip craft with atomic clocks,

which will cut calculation transmission times in half.

High bandwidth lasers can handle photo and videos,

but as we send rockets even further from Earth,

they'll need their own navigation.

One plan is to equip spacecraft with an

autonomous system that will gather images

of nearby objects and triangulate its position.

Sort of like GPS for a car,

but it'll be called DPS,

Deep space positioning system.