We were talking in the office this morning about some people who launched some balloons on New Year's Eve, but had some real difficulties with the GPS coordinates. One of our guys speculated that it might have had something to do with the leap second, and sure enough, I see reports where GPS has had problems in the past when a leap second was added, even though it usually isn't added to the GPS time, only UTC.

I figured there might be enough hobbiests on here that might have been checking their GPS stuff and was curious if you all had heard anything.

It wouldn't be the first time it had happened:

http://www.leapsecond.com/notes/leapsec256.htm

Thanks Mat. That was one of the articules I came across, but couldn't find any reports of anyone having problems this time.

It really depends on your GPS unit. I would check with your manufacturer if an update is required. Leap seconds do throw off coordinates.

Funny you should mention this. The LeapSecond has been much on our minds here at NASA, as we have satellites taking data time-stamped to the millisecond. A whole extra second in there can really gum up the works.

In fact, it advanced some time-stamps into day #366. (You know, day 365 is the last day, so this is the first second over day 365, but clearly the year hasn't changed yet, so...). And some time stamps apparently went to day 1 of year 2005. Again.

It's Y2K all over again, I tell ya.

Why don't all those critical applications use time as seconds since 1600 or something, then there is no leap second effect.

I thought astronomers use such a calender for decades.

There are leap seconds for longer then there is GPS, so any GPS software not beeing able to handle them is very badly designed.

Eirk, Like your English.

Speaking of which, GPS is old hat.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/opinion/story/0,,1677828,00.html