system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
How does a GPS satellite handle all the requests from smart phones and other devices?
gpt
It doesn't.

In contrast to what surprisingly many people believe, GPS does not involve the device sending a signal to the satellites and receiving a reply.

GPS satellites continuously broadcast a signal with its current time and position (satellites have highly accurate atomic clocks on board and are synchronized with eachother and ground stations periodically) towards Earth. Receivers pick up the signal from multiple satellites and use that to compute their location. In practice, receivers use additional tricks to improve the speed and accuracy of the fix (such as using signals from ground stations, WiFi networks, cell towers).

The receiver unit is completely passive and doesn't emit any signals. Its only purpose is to monitor satellite signals and perform the necessary computations to determine its position. The satellites on the other hand only broadcast to receivers, they don't have to listen for any signals other than those used by the system itself to synchronize the satellites to eachother and to ground stations.