Alones/Shutterstock For most people "GPS" is the thing they use in their cars or on their smartphones to avoid getting lost on the way somewhere. The Global Positioning System used in the U.S. may be a technology that is commonplace in our daily lives, but it actually started out as a military project for the U.S. Navy conducting submarine-tracking experiments in the 1960s. Although, ironically, GPS can't work underwater ! As the '70s rolled on, the US Department of Defense needed a global navigation and positioning system desperately, and that research resulted in the NAVSTAR satellite in 1978. Today, the GPS we use isn't the only choice either as various countries have specific satellite tracking systems including China's advanced GPS alternative and Russia's GLONASS system. Once GPS became widely available, scientists across the world started taking advantage of it to aid in research that helps us conserve the environment, and private companies have used it to reduce cost and thus waste.…