原子时
While most clocks derive their time from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the atomic clocks on the satellites are set to "GPS time". The difference is that GPS time is not corrected to match the rotation of the Earth, so it does not contain leap seconds or other corrections that are periodically added to UTC. GPS time was set to match UTC in 1980, but has since diverged. The lack of corrections means that GPS time remains at a constant offset with International Atomic Time (TAI) (TAI - GPS = 19 seconds). Periodic corrections are performed to the on-board clocks to keep them synchronized with ground clocks.