Another Trump casualty: A tiny office that keeps measurements of the world accurate

The National Geodetic Survey ( NGS ) is the oldest scientific agency in the US .

NGS maintains and updates the National Spatial Reference System , a consistent system of physical coordinates used across federal and local governments, the private sector, and academia.

This includes not only latitude and longitude but also measurements of depth and height as well as calculations around Earth 's gravitational field.

Current GPS technology has limits in terms of on-the-ground precision.

In order to update the US ’s datums to be in line with satellite data, land shifts, and accurate measurements of the Earth , staff at NGS were planning on rolling out a long-awaited modernization of the National Spatial Reference System .

The fate of NGS under the Trump administration is unclear.

China 's satellite navigation system, BeiDou , has been gaining on the US ’s GPS system in accuracy.

In 2023 , a US government advisory board on GPS stated in a memo that GPS is now “substantially inferior” to BeiDou .

Like other cuts to public science made under the Trump administration, the losses from NGS could be substantial.