# GPS III 3D model

> Shape built from published dimensions and pictures; details simplified.

Free 3D model of GPS III, a satellite, built from published dimensions by Space Radar. 12,606 triangles, 65 kB glTF, MIT.

- **Class:** Satellites
- **Mission:** Navigation
- **Triangles:** 12,606
- **File:** gps-iii.glb, 65 kB, glTF 2.0 binary (meshopt)
- **Look:** Flat colours
- **Size:** 15 m across
- **Made:** Built from dimensions
- **Added:** 2026-10-13
- **Download:** https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Sara-Managed-Projects/space-radar/main/site/models/gps-iii.glb
- **Mirror:** https://git.sara-agent.org/sara-projects/space-radar/raw/branch/main/site/models/gps-iii.glb
- **Viewer:** https://www.spaceradar.ai/model/?id=gps-iii
- **Licence:** MIT (https://github.com/Sara-Managed-Projects/space-radar/blob/main/LICENSE)
- **Credit:** GPS III 3D model by Space Radar (spaceradar.ai), MIT License

Canonical: https://models.spaceradar.ai/gps-iii/

## How it was made

Built in code from published dimensions and photographs, with no image-to-3D generator and no one else’s mesh. 3D model: built by Space Radar from published dimensions and a US Air Force render of a GPS III satellite.

built by this project in code (the private tool model-from-images: assemble.py, from a yaml of primitives), from the cited dimensions and the pictures under `references`; no image-to-3D model was used, and no published mesh (NASA's 3D Resources on GitHub, 1 583 paths read 2026-10-13, has none of this craft; the survey of 2026-10-13 found no agency model of it under usable terms)

## Dimensions

- Bus 1: 1.8 m
- Bus 2: 2.5 m
- Bus 3: 3.4 m
- Span: 15 m

Source: eoPortal, https://www.eoportal.org/satellite-missions/gps, OPENED 2026-10-13, 'Table 1: GPS Block specifications', column GPS III/IIIF: 'Dimensions (m)' '1.8 x 2.5 x 3.4'; 'Span including solar arrays (m)' '15'; 'Primary Contractors' 'Lockheed Martin'; its text: 'December 23, 2018: The first GPS Block III satellite, SV01 nicknamed Vespucci, launched'; 'Unlike the GPS IIF satellite, the GPS III satellites feature an apogee propulsion system'; 'the UHF Crosslink and Tracking Telemetry & Command (TT&C) subs[ystems]'. THE US SPACE FORCE'S OWN FACT SHEET WAS NOT OPENED (losangeles.spaceforce.mil answers 403, tried 2026-10-13); a search engine's extract of it gives '97 inches wide, 70 inches deep, and 134 inches high', which is 2.46 x 1.78 x 3.40 m and agrees with eoPortal's table. ESA (Dilssner and others, IGS Workshop 2012, https://files.igs.org/pub/resource/pubs/workshop/2012/Poland%202012%20-%20P09%20Dilssner%20PR4.pdf, OPENED 2026-10-13): '12 element helix design common to all GPS and GLONASS antenna types' (said of the blocks before GPS III). NO PAGE OPENED GIVES GPS III'S ANTENNA LAYOUT IN WORDS OR NUMBERS: the deck is read off the Air Force's render: a pale deck wider than the body, a ring of banded helices round a middle group, thin gold rods among them, one long mast at the middle, a dark canister, and a thin boom from the deck's corner with a small antenna at its end. ALSO READ OFF THE RENDER: two panels a wing, each wing about 4.4 x 2.9 m on a forked yoke 2.2 m long (the span is cited, the split is not); the body's dark sides and the pale radiator on one narrow side. OURS: that the wings stand on the 2.5 m faces.

## References

- [GPS Block IIIA](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GPS_Block_IIIA.jpg), US Air Force (Public domain (U.S. Air Force; a work of the US federal government, from losangeles.af.mil))