Satellite navigation for the masses!

An interesting vote at the European Parliment missed our attention last month - but lets face it, no-one really pays much attention to the MEP’s as they are powerless to exert any control over the EC and also populated by a mixed bag of raving communists, loony greens and others too busy screwing over tax payers </rant>.

The vote was related to a raft of policy issues for European space infrastructure and in particular considered the ‘Space and Security’ use of such satellites and technology (for security read ‘military’). Galileo represented a small but significant element of the proposed bill. However, the bill was clear in its intent (for Galileo) with the EP recognising:

[snip] … the necessity of Galileo for autonomous [defence] operations, for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, for Europe’s own security and for the Union’s strategic autonomy; notes that, in particular, its public-regulated service will be vital in the field of navigation, positioning and timing, not least in order to avoid unnecessary risks;

In effect the MEP’s were ratifying the use of Galileo for military applications and independence from US defence technology. There was a reported late attempt by Green MEP’s to have this clause re-written to prevent the use of Galileo for military applications, but this failed. The bill was passed by a huge majority of 502 votes to 83.

This is interesting. Whilst nothing in such a policy could ever constrain the EC it does give them carte blanche to push ahead with the Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS - the military signals) and to undertake further activities, such as PACIFIC, to promote and develop European Galileo defence technology.

It would appear that the debate on the military use of Galileo is over and the message is clear - “Europe’s military will be using Galileo satellite navigation equipment and its defence industry can safely start the development of weapons using Galileo as a replacement for GPS”

There is an interesting article over at Inside GNSS about Boeing receiving DoD funding to continue the development of iGPS - in effect the augmentation of GPS by Iridium satellite. For those of you with short memories Iridium was intended by Motorola to be the future of mobile communications. However, the market decided otherwise and the system went bankrupt only to be bankrolled out of Chapter 11 by the DoD. It’s 66 satellites now serve as a primarily military secure comms system.

The details of the concept are not too clear, with descriptions such as:

GPS signals could be acquired more quickly through amplification and rebroadcasting in a low-earth-orbit system

It is clear that broadcasting precisie time, satellite nav data and ephemerides over Iridium could aid faster TTFF and acquisition at lower signal levels but the suggestion is that the Iridium satellites themselves are being used in the development of a position fix - perhaps through some form of ranging or doppler (a la Transit) type technique.If anyone has any further info please feel free to contact us or leave a URL.

In any event, the development is an interesting one with Boeing suggesting the system may have application in the civil safety of life market. It would be interesting to see iGPS, SBAS and the Galileo SoL service going head to head!

ESA, acting as procurement agent for Galileo on behalf of the EC, have been issuing a number of clarifications on the current FOC procurement activity. One of the more recent [pdf] clearly states that countries party to the Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), namely Canada, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands with respect to Aruba, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States of America are fully entitled to take part in the programme as subcontractors.

So clearly we are unlikely to see a Boeing or LM satellite per se, but there is nothing stopping them contributing significant elements of a satellite or of the ground infrastructure. Looks like the EC are playing it straight by the book with regard to WTO rules. Shame the same can’t be said on the other side of the pond…

Raytheon, developers of the US WAAS SBAS are now tendering for the production version of the Indian SBAS known as GAGAN - GPS aided Geosynchronous Augmentation System. Raytheon have formerly been involved in producing the test bed version of the system that passed through acceptance testing at the end of last year. The customers are the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Airports Authority of India (AAI).

Raytheon’s role as ground segment prime is a reflection of their position as the world’s premier SBAS developer and also meshes nicely with the ISRO’s ambitions which are more oriented at producing spacecraft rather than building ground infrastructures. The timescales for the development have not been revealed but an implementation over at least 2-3 years could be envisaged at best. This remains a positive development for those states who are proponents of the SBAS concept and will add to the proportion of the world in which SBAS services can be received.