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Galileo To Be Europe's Answer To US GPS
judgecorp writes "Two Galileo satellites that will signify the start of the European Union's answer to the American Global Positioning System will be launched into orbit on Thursday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. It's using Soyuz because it is cheaper than the French Ariane — and the satellite system is supposed to free Europe from dependence on a U.S.-controlled positioning system."
This is the first Soyuz launch from French Guiana.
(And so this is the first launch of a possibly man-ratable launcher by ESA).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
>>.. more redundancy is always better. This is probably some of my tax money that has been spent the best
GPS is great, sure, but IIRC Galileo isn't compatible without devices being modified to also accept Galileo signals. So this project is going to cost quite a bit of money in re-engineering and replacement costs for devices to use the new system in addition to GPS.
I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.
The improved technical features of Galileo over GPS, though, are quite nice.
GPS devices have a limited usable life anyways, at least the consumer devices. As the satellites are being shot into space and the system becomes operational new devices start to include also Galileo capability. The basic technology isn't that different from GPS, it isn't like going back to the 80's to develop the first GPS receivers again.
Not all of EU is in NATO. And it wouldn't be impossible for some of the EU states to shoot down the GPS satellites either.
Before Galileo was decided, US did not give the ability to use the full precision of the GPS to non military US units. It also has the capacity to unilateraly switch off GPS on a zone. Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.
About redundancy, note that 2 other positioning systems are currently deployed :
Chinese Beidou : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system
Russian GLONASS : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GLONASS
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The other scenario is that the US can shut down GPS if it believes it is being used by terrorists. The EU might not agree with that assessment, and want to keep it open. Having Galileo gives them that option.
OK, I'm a European and not massively fond of the US military, but I am going to take exception to this.
The Galileo *civilian* band originally overlapped with the US *military* band. In other words, you could buy an over the counter device that could guide a weapon to a specific grid reference in an area the US was fighting a war. Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.
The US asked ESA to pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top not make consumer devices that had dual uses killing US servicemen. ESA said 'ooh, go on you old rascal' and moved the band.
Now, the situation is that both Navstar (the actual name for US GPS; GPS is just the generic name for such a system) and Galileo have civilian and military bands that don't overlap. Either the US and Europe can jam each others signals, completely, without affecting their own military band. Just as the US can achieve exclusive GPS access in Iraq and Afghanistan, France can do just the same when it unilaterally intervenes in one of its old African colonies.
All the change did was move us from a situation where we were screwing the Americans with our network, to one where we have equal power to screw each others network. This doesn't seem massively unreasonable of the US to ask for.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Feeling a bit sore? America is neither our enemy nor our bestest friend ever. America is just a friendly nation; well, mostly friendly, and you guys have certainly always known how to look after your own interests, friendship or not. Which is why it makes sense for Europe not to be too dependent on America. We have our own interests to look after, and a closer relation with China ought to be very much in the cards for us. Being too dependent on America might be a hindrance.
Bad news - this likely won't mean it gets a lock on its position any quicker, due to technical reasons. Essentially, the device has to listen for a few seconds to receive the complete signal.
Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.
Good news -- you have been misinformed. Single chip GPS/Galileo IC with sub-1-second acquisition and similar power usage to current GPS-only chips.
our local OWASP chapter had a great demo from a Cambridge university (UK) researcher who could effectively jam GPS signals and make the GPS receiver believe it was somewhere else. Very cool tech, using GNU-radio and a whole lot of talent. The basic theme was that the GPS protocols are not trustable and todays society places way too much trust in the system.
This also coincides with a major naval exercise off the north coast of Scotland (where extensive GPS jamming was taking place) which ended up with a fishing vessel unable to make a distress call using the automated "big red button". The exercise was hastily stopped as islanders services stopped working (including internet) - it turns out that a lot of civil infrastructure relies on GPS.
With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.
next job: Internet.
I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.
Military alliances like NATO have their place, but I think a major part of this is not about being America's enemy, only about independence. Is it in Europe's interest to not feel they have to bow to America's political pressure? I should certainly think so. America is far to much in the pockets of big corporations, and as long as that is so, I think a politically weaker America is in everybody elses interest - and possibly in the American people's interest as well.
The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive
Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorrydrivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.
It seems so typically American to roll out the big scarecrows of "The Evil Government" and "The Evil Taxes" instead of stepping back and thinking about things. (I know, most Americans actually do exactly that, but you never hear from them).
You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy, and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.
Stop spreading FUD. Europeans do not believe the EU is an evil institute. Sure, there are disagreements and minor political conflicts from time to time, just as there are elsewhere, but to imply that all Europeans think the EU is evil is going just a tad too far. At least we are not under the complete control of corporations as in the US. The EU still has a spine, at times, to stand up for what the citizens want in the face of corporate pressure. It's not perfect but it's far better than the US at the moment. When was the last time US politicians did something for their citizens that was not acting in concert with some corporation or organization (**AAs, I'm looking at you)?
Why? All he said is that it's probably not primarily a militaristic endeavor.
The purpose is easy. Extract money from the citizens. That's the only purpose for which the EU exists.
Please spare us the "TAXES R T3H 3V1L" crap. I pay lots more tax here than I would in the US; however, unlike the case in the US, I find that at least some of the taxes get spent on things that tend to make life better for all.
It's sad that Europeans have to read this news on US sites.
Did you actually see where the links in TFS point to?
Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.
"So many" = "a few right-wing nutjobs".
Nice attempt at trolling. Better luck next time.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
No.
The US asked for the Galileo civilian signal to be moved so it didn't overlap with the US military one. In the original scheme, they wouldn't have been able to block civilian Galileo devices in warzones without blocking their own military signal.
The capabilities of Galileo are unaffected. The civilian accuracy is still better than US military accuracy, but now you wouldn't be able to use it anywhere the US military is fighting.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
WTF are you on about? Not everyone on the planet is psychotic warmonger!
No they are not. But that does not mean you let them be the only one in control of important infrastructure. Its not like the US wouldn't do the same. Turning selective availability back on is not really a act of war... but rather a powerful negotiation tool if such a extreme situation comes up. With all the doom gloom and war that everyone here on /. predicts will result from AGW, then i think its prudent to have a backup.
Allies in one war are often enemies in the next.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.
"So many" = "a few right-wing nut jobs".
To be fair that sentiment is shared by a few left wing nut jobs.
Speaking as a European, I'd just like to say that you're talking out of your arse. Yes, some europeans oppose the EU, however the majority aren't that idiotic and see it for what it is - good for everyone involved. If it wasn't for the EU, the economic crisis would have been 10x worse.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
Also, nationalist movements gain consensus by opposing against yelding any sovereignty to the european institutions; this makes the EU weaker, which then allows themselves to point out the EU is just a bureaucratic superstructure with no decision power.
The nationalists whine against the EU when it's time for a state to offer its help to other countries in the union, and then whine again against the EU when it's time to get help from the union, and it doesn't arrive because the nationalists in the other states behave exactly in the same way as they did before (see what happens every time some states are hit by an immigration wave).
As far as I can tell the truth is this.
The US has the ability to override, switch off, lower accuracy etc with their GPS system.
They will not have the ability to do that with Galileo.
Originally the EU had also planned to have Galileo use the same frequency that GPS does, which means that not only could the US not turn it off, they couldn't jam it either because then they'd jam themselves too.
However after threatening to shoot any Galileo satellites using the GPS frequency down, the EU finally agreed to use different frequencies so jamming would be possible.
Are they really going to log the information of every satnav that communicates with Galileo, match it up to a car, and then send you a bill in the mail? GPS actually doesn't work like that (The GPS system can't figure out who's listening). Wouldn't you have to register with the Bureau of keeping track of weird things, just for them to know where to send the bill? Assuming this works at all. Which it doesn't. People seem to think that GPS satellites are something like sky cameras, that look down on you and tell you where you are. At least one conspiracy theory *requires this literally* http://ironiestoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-galileo-really-just-eu-big-brother.html Miraculously dumbassed stuff (signs on the road indeed!). Didn't we all just read Wikipedia's GPS entry after that CERN thing? And this is not to mention all the other reasons why a GPS system wouldn't (not just couldn't) function as a position monitor, including all those mentioned here, the construction of a multiple other GPS networks in other countries, and the lack of necessity for a NEW system, should the big bad EU want to get up to some mischief. Troll? The fact that there's a chance you're not is sad for us all
I would say the in Europe people have a healthy paranoia about the government. But we are far less adverse to taxation if it makes sense. If we really are serious about the externalities caused by CO2 then it needs to have regulated cost. Just as one example.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Here in Norway we're almost 5 million people and our largest military threat - despite it being post-Cold War is Russia, which is a huge country who could field more soldiers than we have people. If NATO won't help we're screwed anyway and if NATO comes people expect the cavalry to come charging to our rescue anyway. But is the US interested in protecting people that can't be bothered to have a decent defense of their own? If everybody is betting on NATO to aid them, who'll be the ones delivering all the aid? Would you seriously accept the logic on anything that "They have tanks, so we don't have to" "They have carriers, so we don't have to" "They have submarines, so we don't have to". No, Europe should have its Galileo because it's ours even though the US has theirs and we're allies. An alliance should come on top of your own defense, not instead of it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.
That's not quite fair. The WWI and WWII invasions of Belgium and France were pre-NATO and the USA had no obligations to intervene. The Falklands war placed the US in a pickle, firstly Argentina had some support in S-America and they could hardly intervene without creating a diplomatic mess, secondly any help from the USA for Britain would have been deeply humiliating to the latter. As it was the British succeeded by the skin of their teeth so no harm was done. The US also provided diplomatic help behind the scenes by securing either the cooperation or neutrality of several S-American nations in favor of the Brits.
Having worked on GPS type things in the past both systems are very similar and the electronics is not hard to do these days, and because they are so similar the development costs won't be high. Hell someone on Makeit did their own GPS receiver *without* a gps chip. Very cool.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Some telecom gear uses GPS for time synchronisation, so when that disappears, things can break.
Did the immigrants come over and steal all your jobs, women and punctuation marks?
In the UK there seems to be a majority who thinks the EU is evil. This belief is fueled by a constant stream of anti-EU stories that are often nothing more than myths.
Of course, this makes the EU all the more irritating to Euro-sceptics in the UK...
The funny thing is, someone driving an ultra efficient low emissions car pays less thanks to the higher mpg. In EU, the significant cost of the fuel per liter is taxes thus efficient car pays less tax. Linking the road tax (i.e., cost of the infrastructure) to the mileage actually makes it more balanced overall.
Currently in UK cars built after 2001 pay the road tax based on CO2 emissions. Anything older pays a flat rate based on the capacity of the engine.
They don't have to track down the cars. During MOT, mileage is one of the values recorded thus it can be used to calculate the taxes. Even though it is relatively easy to clock a car, majority of the people will not bother with it.
You do know that France was the world's foremost military power in 1940 and everybody expected her to beat the Germans handily, right? Furthermore, any theoretical American Expeditionary Force would have been routed by the Nazis just like the British were, and just clogged up the beaches at Dunkirk. I suppose that whole "liberating France & Belgium four years later" thing did nothing that deserves any credit.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Full precision has been in place for quite some time. I was one of the GPS operators (SSO) that basically began the process of this back in the mid-90s. This is total BS because the EU is going broke fast and they want to launch a billion dollar+ program (yes, Euro billion plus, whatever) for duplication? Not buying it. GLONASS is different because they don't pretend to be our friends. Their system declined due to funding, but now they have the money again. GLONASS birds launched in the 90s were garbage. While our Block 1's intended for 3 year usage were hitting a decade in life (SVN3 hit 13 years when the electrical system could no longer sustain it through eclipse season), their's were barely hitting design life.
For the comments, "We can shoot them down." Completely irresponsible. It's like saying, "If we want to destroy their bridge, we can just Nuke it." If you destroy a satellite, that position in space becomes unusable due to debris for centuries. We're not going to do it. This is why we were very angry with the Chinese for testing ASAT awhile back. Completely unnecessary and very irresponsible. We don't test GBU's on busy highways in the middle of urban cities (unless you include Iraq, but I kid).
Everybody is thinking about war. I was involved, in a small way, with the planning of Galileo, and one of the very big concerns in Europe was that the US could start charging for the use of GPS. The technology is already on the GPS satellites, and it could be done regionally (with fairly big regions, but enough to keep it free in the US whilst charging in Europe and Asia if not in Canada and Mexico). The free availability of GPS without selective availability is subject to annual presidential review. Considering the extent that the world is dependent on GPS now, if the USA started charging it would have the rest of the world over a barrel. Galileo isn't so much about military competition as commercial competition.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I don't think it's a majority. In the european elections, voting for UKIP (who vote against any bill in the European Parliament, no matter how sensible it is) is a pretty clear vote against the EU. They currently have 15% of the seats, and received about 15% of the vote in the last election, including the bump that they got from disillusionment with the more mainstream parties over the expenses scandal.
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BINGO, active war between the US and EU seems rather unlikely but strained relationships seem far more reasonable and actively destroying or disabling another nations satellites is a FAR higher escalation than merely disabling a service you give the world for free.
The EU has become FAR too reliant on GPS service, a service that is only available due to the altruism of the US government.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I pay lots more tax here than I would in the US; however, unlike the case in the US
That depends on where you live in the EU, but it's true for fewer than half of the members if you include everything (sales taxes, property taxes, and so on) and it's only true for a small handful of EU member states if you count the amount spent on healthcare in the 'tax' column.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Nowhere near as easily. To shut off GPS in a region the DoD just has to press a couple of buttons in Colorado (IIRC). To shut off Galileo in a region they have to get jammers into the region itself, and those jammers are a target. Or they could do what they've said they would do as a first measure -- work with the Board of Trade to apply economic sanctions to the operators of Galileo to force them to shut it down.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I've not heard about Galileo for a long time - last I heard was at the Farnborough air show almost a decade ago - but one of the main selling points they had back then was the idea of having both Galileo and GPS receivers in the same device and using them to calibrate each other. This would mean that even if you jammed the Galileo frequencies, the device would switch back to using just GPS and would still be more accurate than a pure GPS device because of the initial calibration.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The EU also gains the UK a "sodding fortune". You might not have noticed that the migration laws work both ways. The company I work for (almost all of whose employees are British) works globally and gets a lot of its work from within the EU precisely because of EU procurement regulations, common European standards, ease of travel and working rights. You don't like immigration? Well, you need to send the Anglo Saxons and the Celts back: Keep Britain Beaker! (But wait! Oh noes! Even the beaker people came from Spain originally!)
Try getting your information on Europe from somewhere other than the Daily Mail and Murdoch.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
It would have, if they hadn't agreed to a design change that now allows selective jamming of the Galileo civilian signal by the US without affecting the GPS military signal. In the "discussion" leading up to that decision, the USA even threatened to shoot down Galileo satellites if it came to such a conflict without selective jamming being possible. Lovely.
This is total BS because the EU is going broke fast and they want to launch a billion dollar+ program (yes, Euro billion plus, whatever) for duplication?
No, they don't want to launch the programme. They launched the programme something like twenty years ago. They want to continue the programme, which is coming to fruition.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Fact remains that GPS is controlled by the US (military) and that restrictions are in place for civilian usage as far as accuracy, speed and altitude are concerned. I also still remember quite clearly that during the Iraq war all GPS receivers in Europe were off by about 100m at some point. I do not think that was an accident.
As far as shooting down GPS satellites is concerned: according to Wikipedia that completely irresponsible comment was a threat made by US officials:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)#Tension_with_the_United_States
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog
GPS includes a (currently disabled) feature called Selective Availability (SA) that adds intentional, time varying errors of up to 100 meters (328 ft) to the publicly available navigation signals. This was intended to deny an enemy the use of civilian GPS receivers for precision weapon guidance.
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10140
President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.
So from what I understand, the accuracy of GPS can be degraded for civilians whenever the US government wishes to do it, and GWB tried to make it possible to switch off the network whenever a terrorist attack hits U.S. You have to admit that this doesn't make non-US users of the system feel very secure. I guess that in case of a terrorist attack, the US would not be very concerned about an ongoing French military operation in Ivory Coast for instance, and would switch off or degrade the system without a second thought.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
They only just shut off LORAN last year.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Galileo isn't so much about military competition as commercial competition.
Not sure the numbers work there. Even if you ignore the approximately $5 billion in initial costs, it costs $750 million/year to maintain. Was the US really ever going to charge the EU $750 million/year?
Redundancy is fine, but I think this is mainly French nationalism and a reflection of the world's recent distrust of the US.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
As much as GWB is everyone's new devil pariah most-loathed person, he can't rewire satellites already in space. And before you quote me Wiki again, no the space shuttle can't go out to 11,000 miles to do an upgrade. It's A) No longer flying B) Not capable of going even close to that distance.
Ignore every movie you've ever saw about space. We don't "flick stuff off and on" at a whim. We don't reposition satellites real time, at least not GPS, DSP, DMSP, or EHF (Milstar) birds. Spy satellites are even harder since they're in a highly elliptical orbit which is travelling at exceptionally high speeds when it's at perigee (the nearest point, which is usually where they're spying on). It's a matter of physics.
We've had many terrorist attacks since SA was turned off: Khobar Towers, USS Cole, 9/11, etc. Still off and no degradation.
I apologize if I gave an impression we physically go up. When I say, "Go up on a bird," it's meaning, contacting the Ground Antenna, establishing C2 (S-band) and going "active", which means transmitting S-bits, etc. At 11,000 miles (plus change) there's no practical way to ever physically get to one of the GPS satellites. When we're done iwht them, we spin them up for physical stability, and then boost them out of their operational orbit. It's also referred to as "super syncing a bird."
If we ever get to a point where the US is so unstable it can't Command and Control GPS satellites, the world will be worried about a ton more pressing things than our GPS satellites. For what it's worth a high school student with two week's pay at minimum wage could have the technical and fiscal ability to jam GPS for a large area. The US Gov isn't your boogey man in this scenario. If we didn't touch GPS on 9/11, I think it's a pretty clear indication it's not on the table.
Shooting down a GPS satellite is MUCH different and significantly more difficult than the recent satellite shootdowns we've had in the last few years. GPS is about 13,000 miles from Earth while the LEO satellites that were shot down were 200 miles from Earth.
It might not be a bad thing. But it might be a bad thing if the body setting the pricing were an uncontrolled monopoly, which is what worried Europe enough to invest in the Galileo programme.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
SA is officially dead via presidential order. It's not even available in the most recent version of bird (at least officially).
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Like I said, officially it's not there. I have little doubt that it's just a single command away from being turned on, but I doubt it would do any good. The reason is that with GLONASS nearing completion, Galileo coming online, and differential GPS you aren't going to be able to meaningfully confuse the positioning system on anything you're really worried about.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Care to enlighten us about the secret US Military base in Antarctica? I've been there a few times and am pretty familiar with the place. Other than US Military airlifters on lease to the National Science Foundation there is no military presence (anymore). Up to about 1995, the Navy had a bigger role in the logistics and administration down there but not since.
The point that I was responding to was that just because cars can drive themselves we might still need the same number. The poster was suggesting that we could all share cars as they could move between people on their own, I was pointing out that people tend to commute at the same time.
Your point about buses added nothing and wasn't funny. If buses were the answer, we'd all be using them now.