Indian GPS linked to Indian Time

New Delhi Aug 5: An agreement was inked recently. Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) yesterday has signed a pact with the
National Physical Laboratory (NPL) to use the "official time" provided by NPL for the indigenously developed global positioning system (GPS), the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).

Sources say the signing of the agreement would give strategic advantage to the country. They have also said that "linking the IRNSS to high-precision atomic clocks maintained at NPL would help ISRO to end its dependence on the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) for time synchronisation and also bring down the error in time precision to less than 20 nanoseconds".

NPL- the Official Time keeper is a constituent laboratory of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) located in Delhi. Scientists say that Indian Developed IRNSS is similar to US based GPS or Russian based GLONASS. and can be used for following services.

* Accurate positional information services.
* Tracks an event or location.
* It gives out time with respect to Coordinated Universal Time as per UNSO.

currently, the time is measured using Atomic Clocks located at different parts of the world. ISRO scientists that linking Indian GPS with Indian Standard Time would help the country in many ways in coming future.