FAA Shutdown of Geostationary Satellite on May 17 Could Affect Some GPS Farming Systems, Including GPS for Ag Aviation

The Federal Aviation Administration and ag services and equipment providers are reminding farmers that next Tuesday, May 17, 2022, the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) will put a new geostationary satellite into service. This new satellite, PRN 135, will replace the current WAAS PRN 138 satellite, which will be decommissioned and cease transmissions.

The PRN 135 satellite began WAAS transmissions on April 26, 2022. The new satellite is the Galaxy 30 located at 125 degrees west longitude. PRN 138 will cease WAAS transmissions on May 17.

After this date, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers that have been manually set to receive corrections from PRN 138 will not be able to obtain a differential correction. A different PRN will need to be selected. GNSS applications use GNSS receivers to collect position, velocity and time information.