'European GPS' set for lift-off

19 October 2011 Last updated at 19:48 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

Europe is finally set to begin the rollout of its long-awaited satellite navigation system, Galileo

Two spacecraft will ride to orbit atop a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana.

The pair incorporate next-generation technologies that should deliver more precise timing and location data than the current American GPS network.

But Galileo is still years away from full operation. A further 28 satellites will be needed to complete its orbiting constellation.

So far, the European Commission (EC), which initiated the project, has purchased only 18 satellites. These will fly between now and early 2015.

Lift-off for the Soyuz is timed for 07:34 local time (10:34 GMT; 11:34 BST).

The event will have double significance because it will mark the first time that the Russian rocket has operated from Western territory. The vehicles normally fly from the Baikonur and Plesetsk spaceports, in Kazakhstan and northern Russia respectively.

The European Space Agency (Esa) has acted as the EC's technical agent on Galileo, leading the procurement of the satellites.

Its director-general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, admitted to having some eve-of-launch nerves.

Continue reading the main story

GALILEO UNDER CONSTRUCTION

• A project of the European Commission and the European Space Agency
• Some 30 satellites are likely to be launched in batches in the coming years
• Galileo will work alongside the US GPS and the Russian Glonass sat-nav systems
• Europe's full system promises real-time positioning down to a metre or less
• It should deepen and extend high-value markets already initiated by GPS
• Some say economies are over-reliant on GPS; Galileo ought to make sat-nav more robust

"I've always said that a rocket is a complex machine and even though the Soyuz is the world's most reliable launcher, I will be pleased to get past Thursday," he told BBC News. "A launch is always an achievement."

The Soyuz will put the two Galileo spacecraft at an altitude of 23,222km, where they will circle the globe every 14 hours on a path inclined 56 degrees to the equator. Together with two additional platforms to be launched next year, they will test and validate the Galileo system end-to-end.

Assuming no major flaws are found, 14 further spacecraft will then be despatched in twos and fours to take the network to the provisional operating constellation of 18.

Compared with GPS, Galileo carries more precise atomic clocks - the heart of any sat-nav system. In theory, the data transmitted by Galileo should be significantly better than its American counterpart. Whereas a position fixed by the publicly availably GPS signal might have an error of about 10m, Galileo's errors should be on the scale of a metre or so.

But the systems will be interoperable, meaning the biggest, most obvious benefit to users will simply be the fact that they can see more satellites in the sky.

So, as the decade progresses and the number of spacecraft in orbit increases, the performance of all sat-nav devices should improve. Fixes should be faster and more reliable, even in testing environments such as big cities where tall buildings will often obscure a receiver's view of the transmitting spacecraft.

Few people perhaps recognise the full extent of GPS usage today. It is not just drivers on the roads who rely on it - banks employ GPS time to stamp global financial transactions; telecommunications and computer networks, and electricity grids are synchronised on the "ticks" of its orbiting atomic clocks.

"I am convinced not only that Europe needs Galileo but the whole needs it, too," said Mr Dordain. "More and more services are based on navigation signals. To have two or even three constellations would therefore make these services more accurate and more robust."

The feasibility of developing a European satellite-navigation system was first studied in the early 1990s.

Initially conceived as a joint venture between the public and private sectors, the project very nearly collapsed in 2007.

Even at that stage, it was running behind schedule. Myriad technical, financial and political obstacles had been thrown in its path.

The EC eventually decided to fund the project entirely from the public purse, significantly increasing the expected burden on taxpayers.

What should have cost EU citizens a little more than one billion euros will now cost them well in excess of five billion. That is in addition to annual running costs above 800m euros a year.

The EC's continued commitment to the project despite its many problems is based on the belief that huge returns to the European economy will accrue from the investment.

Already, GPS is said to underpin global markets that are worth several tens of billions of euros annually.

The new European constellation is expected to deepen and extend those markets as sat-nav functionality becomes ubiquitous in consumer devices such as mobile phones.

1. Like Baikonur, Sinnamary has a large flame bowl under the pad
2. A key difference is the mobile gantry, withdrawn prior to launch
3. Soyuz receives a big boost by launching closer to the equator
4. Rockets are brought to the pad along a 700m-long rail line
5. The segments of a Soyuz are assembled in the MIK building
6. Launch control is just 1km from the pad, in a secure bunker
7. Other buildings on the 120ha site include propellant storage areas

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/int/news/-/news/science-environment-15372540

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