Geographical mile longitude at the equator is thus exactly 60 geographical miles. It was closely related to the nautical mile, which was originally determined as 1 minute of arc along a great circle of the Earth, but is nowadays defined as exactly 1852 metres. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) notes that: "The international nautical mile of 1 852 meters (6 076.115 49...feet) was adopted effective July 1, 1954, for use in the United States. The value formerly used in the United States was 6 080.20 feet = 1 nautical (geographical or sea) mile." (6080.2 feet is 1853.24496 meters.)
Astronomical unit expanding outward from the Sun. This has led to calls to abandon the astronomical unit as a unit of measurement. As the speed of light has an exact defined value in SI units and the Gaussian gravitational constant "k" is fixed in the astronomical system of units, measuring the light time per unit distance is exactly equivalent to measuring the product "G" in SI units. Hence, it is possible to construct ephemerides entirely in SI units, which is increasingly becoming the norm. A 2004 analysis of radiometric measurements in the inner Solar System suggested that the secular increase in the