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"Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS
oliderid sends along a BBC report on progress toward Europe's home-grown GPS system. The Galileo concept will get an initial test via four "pathfinder" satellites that will be the first in the Galileo constellation. Galileo is intended to be complementary with the US GPS system — when all 30 Galileo birds are flying, a receiver with both GS and Galileo capability should enjoy 1-meter positional accuracy, vs. the several meters available through GPS alone, according to the article. There's a video tour of the facility where the pathfinders are being built. "After all the wrangling, the delays, and the furor over cost, Europe's version of GPS is finally starting to take shape. Due for launch in pairs in late 2010 and early 2011, the 'pathfinders' will form a mini-constellation in the sky. They will transmit the navigation signals that demonstrate the European system can become a reality."
How are they getting funding? As recently as yesterday I was reading about how it was pretty much an orphaned project because no one wanted to buy what was already available for free (albeit less reliably). I skimmed TFA and found nothing on the matter. No matter how they funded it (unless they sold some babies or something), I'm glad they are moving forward on this. I see this as being really good for Europe, and the space industry in general.
What I think is really cool about GPS is that without Einstein's theory of general relativity, it wouldn't work. For example, the atomic clocks aboard the satellites run faster because they're higher up in the Earth's gravitational field, and when you're higher in a gravitational field, time flows more quickly. If they didn't compensate for this effect (and a bunch of others), the system wouldn't work at all. Of course you can still find kooks on the internet who think that relativity is all wrong, and have mathematical proofs to that effect. I wonder if those people refrain from using GPS?
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GPS is so standard now, and it is bugfree. It's hard to imagine anyone switching.
Yeah, "complementary" is a long word, isn't it? I wonder what it means.
It seems you can use it as a quality-enhancing addition to GPS instead of a replacement - that might help.
You can buy a receiver for GLONASS. You wouldn't want to average it with GPS, though, because GLONASS is a lot less accurate.
Actually not so. I had to have a survey done to mark some specific spots for calibrating our gps receivers for dgps. He used a Trimble receiver to mark the spot. The spot was within +/- .1 inch and he verified the accuracy using the Russian GLONASS system. I was quite surprised that he actually did this. He said it was standard company procedure.
There was a point in time where the Russians didn't have the money to maintain the system, however that has changed, and I believe they have been adding sattelites to bring it up to full capacity.
"Every security scheme that is based on secrets eventually fails." - Steve Jobs
Assuming the US stick to their promise to keep SA turned off...
The whole point of the EU system during normal use is not to REPLACE GPS but act as a ADDITIONAL aid which should improve accuracy.
Of course only America matters and the rest of the world doesn't...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
They are getting funding from the government.
1) They want to track all vehicles in the EU. Galileo is designed to have much better performance in urban areas than GPS.
Proposals were on the UK Department for Transport website which detailed the desire to place a satellite positioning tracker with a cellular modem in every vehicle, by law, for the alleged purpose of "road pricing" ; charging for transit on key congested roads at certain times. Road pricing is horseshit because if having to drive on a congested road isn't sufficient deterrent to stop you doing it, then taxation isn't going to achieve it. You could also achieve the same goal much more cheaply with a mandatory active RFID numberplate and a pickup loop on these "key" roads, so Occams razor says that they want something that doesn't just track your use of certain roads.
2) Military reasons
Let's face it. Would you want your military dependant on a system that a culture of well known isolationists who live half a world away can switch off at their whim? Neither would I. Independance from US control is the second motivator.
It's the first step on the European plan of invasion. They can't rely on the GPS to invade the USA so they build their own.
Well, that depends on how much money you would put into such a system. For example, Trimble R8 GNSS Receiver supports all GPS, GLONASS and future Galileo signals. In Europe you could buy such a receiver with ~10000 Euros.
A gps time source is only off by a handful of ns. You then want to send that time over NTP and add milliseconds of year?
Shhh, plan GIANT OCTOPI was supposed to be secret.
the precision of any of these systems is much higher then NTP; there's no point.
If they wait a few years they'll be able to buy it from the chinese for just pennies on the euro.
True, only American matters, since we determine everthing in the world, from the economy to what's hot in music. Hell, were even the best typists.
I thought Pathfinder was the project to establish a communications link with Voyager.
Seeing as civilian technologies have been demonstrated to get around the artificial limitation in the accuracy of GPS wouldn't it make more sense for the U.S. military to just allow access to the full precision signal to civilians?
A gps time source is only off by a handful of ns. You then want to send that time over NTP and add milliseconds of year?
How else would you distribute your time reference?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Why, from "unspent agricultural subsidies", of course.
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/3994
If you need precision you could use IEEE 1588v2 with or without synchronous Ethernet.
IEEE 1588v2 Precision Time Protocol
Synchronous Ethernet
Thanks. That looks interesting. It is the type of thing we should probably be using in my day job.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
[quote]Assuming the US stick to their promise to keep SA turned off...[/quote]
Well, turning on SA would screw airplanes everywhere, and new GPS III satellites aren't going to have SA (this was announced in 2007 so it may have already started), so it is pretty hard to not keep their promise.
Wow, thanks! And I thought it would be pretty funny, to see a couple of satellites in 17th century clothes, float trough space... )
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I agree that mass vehicle tracking raises very serious privacy concerns, but road pricing does reduce traffic. You might be interested in the Transport For London annual report, which indicates that traffic in the city is about 20% lower than it otherwise would be.
The trouble with your proposal to just track "key" roads is that it encourages traffic to do rat-runs along secondary roads. I experienced this personally when tolling was brought in on a freeway near my house; the alternative routes were suddenly jam-packed with traffic, particularly at off-peak times when they were previously quiet.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
This is good. High-precision GPS, which requires seeing 5 or more satellites, is intermittent in urban canyon situations. With the ability to use GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo signals, the odds of having five sats high in your local sky improve substantially. The high-precision (15cm) receivers will be less flakey.
Well, turning on SA would screw airplanes everywhere...
No it wouldn't. How the hell do to you think they flew planes around in the 80's. Do you really think the only navigation device on a plane is GPS? Furthermore they usually have (commercial airliners at least) military grade GPS and SA won't disrupt them. Finally what the hell are pilots for?
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Hello,
It's not just a GPS replacement. It has more accuracy for civil users, and it has integrity, which is very important for flight traffic. It will guarantee that your received signal is true.
Additional services for emergency and rescue are also implemented in the Galileo signals.
Best Regards,
Carlos
The whole point of the EU system during normal use is not to REPLACE GPS but act as a ADDITIONAL aid which should improve accuracy.
Of course only America matters and the rest of the world doesn't...
I always thought the point of Galileo was to have a positioning service that is not controlled by the military. NAVSTAR-GPS is american military, GLONASS russian military.
Even after Gravity Probe B, some issues remain, and ESA is planning to send to space the ACES clocks to settle of some long-standing debates.
That's really not how selective availability works. You can't just enable SA for certain people - it's either on (in which case nobody but those with the encryption keys gets it, which would black out high precision GPS for all commercial receivers, world wide), or it's off (in which case everyone gets the unencrypted signal). You can't just punish individual countries.
And it's moot anyway, as many of the satellites currently orbiting, and all the new ones, don't even include the feature. I doubt it's even possible to turn on SA at this point.
Think I must have hit the wrong key as I did put a line about it not being subject to SA... Ok, SA is currently at 0 but the capability to degrade the L1 / CA position is still there...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Doubt civi airliners use the L2 gps as the US are very sensitive about who gets to use SAAS modules let alone who gets hold of the keys...
(SAAS = Selective availability / Anti-Spoofing, the bit for the L2 PY code signal)
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
Yes i know. But they get it a tamper proof module from a "approved" manufacture, there is no need to give anyone the codes anymore than a solder has the codes when they have a military unit. The new airliners also have INS that is also "controlled" heavily and usually is also a military unit re tasked for the job. After all you can't just buy a GPS unit that works at airliner speeds or heights so they are already using specialty units with exemptions.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!