Space Assets as Digital Infrastructure

Positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) infrastructure — the invisible backbone underlying everything from smartphone maps to financial transaction timestamps — depends on a small number of national satellite constellations. The United States' Global Positioning System (GPS) was declared fully operational in 1995 with a baseline constellation of 24 satellites, now operated by the US Space Force; Russia maintains the parallel GLONASS system; the European Union's Galileo system declared its first operational services in December 2016; and China completed its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System's third-generation global constellation in June 2020 with the launch of its final satellite, giving China full independence from reliance on any foreign PNT system for both civilian and military applications.