Galileo Goes Forward, but Who Runs the Show? And What of Compass?
Sam Wormley
Europe's Galileo project certainly seems to be back on track, and
despite recent optimism in Russia over GLONASS, it may indeed become
the second fully functional GNSS, following GPS. But a few
uncertainties for Galileo remain for Europe to address, among them
China's Compass.
http://sidt.gpsworld.com/gpssidt/content/printContentPopup.jsp?id=505981
Mar 27, 2008
By:Alan Cameron
Galileo Goes Forward, but Who Runs the Show? And What of Compass?
Galileo looks forward to its second satellite launch, that of GIOVE-B,
at about this time next month. April 27 is the scheduled date, from
Baikonur launchpad in Kazakhstan. Giove-B will test key technologies
for the Galileo project, including the most advanced atomic clock to go
into orbit. B's passive hydrogen maser will keep time to better than
one nanosecond (billionth of a second) in 24 hours. Better clocks mean
increased accuracy, if everything else proves to be all right.
Giove-B is said to be 95 percent identical to the proposed final
constellation satellites -- although there remains at least one
intermediate step, the four in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites yet to
come. Nevertheless, the mantle of Second GNSS may yet descend, after
all, on the slow, unsteady Galileo program, as the recently optimistic
GLONASS program absorbs blows to the budget body from the Russian
government's Audit Chamber Board, and China's Compass program remains
ever an enigma, without a demonstrated global business case.
Pending GIOVE-B's orbit entry, Galileo activities continue moving
forward, back, or sideways, as the case may be. As Brad Parkinson will
tell you, it takes a lot of maneuvering to get a satellite system
launched -- a lot of players, maybe a dead end and a regrouping or
two, and a surprising amount of talk.
View from the Top
Minister Jacques Barrot, vice-president in charge of transport for the
European Commission, addressing the press at the Munich Satellite
Navigation Summit last month: "We have crossed a decisive line for
Galileo, which from now on becomes a major project of the European
Commission. The infrastructure will be publicly funded through the
European Space Agency.
"Our problem in the past has been in the procurement plan, due to
complementary capabilities among the different [national, competing]
aerospace industries. Now our major problem is to adhere to the
schedule and the financial measure that we have presented," Barrot
continued. "The procurement plan is in six segments. We hope to secure
the contracts by the end of this year. 2009 and 2010 will correspond to
the construction of satellites. 2011 and 2012 will see their launching,
and Galileo will become functionally operational in 2013.
"Our preoccupation is to interest the greatest number of enterprises in
developing applications, particularly in the transport sector, as well
as in search and rescue, precise measurement, and so on. We leave open
the question of military use. We cannot pre-judge this issue."
Alan Cameron (I was in Munich covering the event for GPS World): "The
other evening during the opening plenary, Madame Etelka Barsi-Pataky,
member of the European Parliament and rapporteur for Galileo, proposed
the termination of the Galileo Supervisory Authority (GSA). I did not
understand the rationale for doing so. Can you elaborate on this?"
Minister Barrot: "In the beginning, Galileo was to be a public-private
partnership (PPP). This would normally require a supervisory body such
as the GSA. Once we have left the PPP aside, once we go back to the
process [of wholly public funding], such a supervisory authority will
not have the same role. The Parliament believes that in this case it
would be better to accept the discontinuation of the GSA, and return to
this question in 2013, when there will again be need for an
organization to oversee the concession operation of Galileo."
Inside Maneuvers
To provide context to the question above, regarding suppression of the
GSA as proposed by the Hungarian minister Etelka Barsi-Pataky, I filed
the following account from my spartan Munich hotel room in the wee
hours following the opening plenary of the Navigation Summit :
A new player has actively entered the Galileo administration arena. The
European Parliament (EP), having rounded up a 3.4-billion-euro
allocation for Galileo to achieve full operational capability (FOC) by
2013, intends to remain on the scene to ensure that that amount of
money, and no more, is spent en route. "The European Parliament and the
European Council have made it very clear," the European Commission's
(EC's) Director of GNSS Unit Paul Verhoef told the Munich Satellite
Navigation Summit plenary session. "This budget is it."
The EP's Committee on Transport and Tourism recently voted to disband
the GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) and install its own watchdog body,
the GNSS Oversight Committee. It has also made it clear that, while the
European Space Agency (ESA) will continue as the procurement agent for
the Galileo program, it must adapt its usual practices to EU standards
for Galileo purposes, and not continue with its own standard operating
procedures.
Whether or not the GSA will indeed go away remains a subject for
discussion between the EP and the EC. The Commission wants it to
continue, but even if it does not, "We need the expertise of GSA
staff," in whatever guise or form, according to Verhoef.
The European member of Parliament who is responsible, the "rapporteur,"
for Galileo, Etelka Barsi-Pataky, told the Summit plenary audience that
she sees three problem areas in Galileo's ongoing development:
financing, governance, and procurement. "These are sensitive questions
between the European Parliament and the European Council," she stated,
signaling new tension between the elected body of the European Union
and the entity it has created to administer and execute its policies.
"I think we need better and stronger political control and oversight.
The European Parliament is not happy with so many agencies."
That the Galileo program is now receiving so much attention from the EP
is perhaps a sign that it is finally about to become real -- by
spending large additional sums of real money.
When questioned directly as to whether she personally supported
decommissioning the GSA, Barsi-Pataky demurred, having previously said
only that the committee's vote was "nearly unanimous." She did state
that, "As rapporteur, my responsibility is to bring the program
forward, and if it turns out that it is best for the program to keep
the GSA, then I will support keeping it. If we keep the GSA, we have to
give it a different task and different responsibilities. The GSA as it
is today is not the best solution for Galileo. It has to be modified,
or it could be that another body will take its place. The EP committee
and the EC are in discussions. In three or four weeks, we will find a
real solution that will promote the program."
Clearly, the Galileo program is about to move decisively forward. Not
as clear is whose hands will actually be at the wheel. Barsi-Pataky
concluded emphatically, "We need to start the program now, with strong
control."
Threat from the East
Galileo program officials fret over possible technical and
security-related threats posed by the nascent Compass system touted by
China. Talks during the week of April 21 this year between the European
Space Agency (ESA), the European Commission (EC), and the Chinese vice
minister for science and technology may or may not resolve the impasse.
The EC says it must commit to a specific Galileo signal structure
sometime this summer, and needs to know how China's satnav project will
unfold in order to do so. China has filed frequency registrations with
the International Telecommunication Union, and has announced plans to
grow its current barebones regional system to a full global
constellation.
As reported by GPS World from the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in
February, Jing Guifei of the National Remote Sensing Center of China
and the Ministry of Science and Technology said the Compass frequency
design plan calls for four carrier frequencies and bandwidth of
downlink RNSS signals:
* B1: 1561.098 plus or minus 2.046 Mhz
* B1-2: 1589.742 plus or minus 2.046 Mhz
* B2: 1207.14 plus or minus 12 Mhz
* B3: 1268.52 plus or minus 12 Mhz
"We have also tested a new satellite, the Compass-m1. The first MEO
satellite, launched April 2007, is for system in-orbit validation and
to secure the frequency filings," Guifei asserted.
Knowledgeable observers privately express uncertainty about China's
true intentions. The country certainly feels a regional system to be an
absolute necessity for military reasons, but it has not made a clear
case for a global system, and may be angling for some kind of
bargaining chips instead. Meanwhile, the potential global Compass
signals as currently specified would interfere with Galileo's signals,
throwing a monkey wrench into Galileo plans to set its signal specs
firmly before soliciting build bids from the industry in July, en route
to final contracts in December.
Compass proposes to use frequencies planned for Galileo's Public
Regulated Service (PRS) -- and for the GPS military code --
meaning that in an emergency, Europe could not jam the Chinese signal
without also jamming its own encrypted, security-related signals as
well. The same problem holds for the U.S. military.
Diplomacy remains a delicate matter for the United States with China,
particularly in the Taiwan Strait. The U.S. State Department has been
in discussions with the Chinese regarding Compass but has likewise
found uncertainty, not only in program direction within China, but in
knowing who there really makes such decisions.
Runge11
"Sam Wormley" <swor...@mchsi.com> a écrit dans le message de
news:bIjHj.43227$TT4.25055@attbi_s22...
Happy Trails
wrote:
>Yawn, what is your point bringing us the news ?
>
Grunge,
Some of us appreciate that somebody else goes to the trouble of
rounding up interesting gps-related stuff and providing it here.
If you find it boring, why not just ignore it without comment?
- Tom
Runge11
I asked the man what was his point, his aim, his goal, why does he do it ?
Didn't ask you to butt in
---> Back where you come from, thank you.
"Happy Trails" <nom...@myplace.com> a écrit dans le message de
news:f8esu3pqko8ohkrfn...@4ax.com...
Happy Trails
wrote:
>Ooops here come the local church goer, moral preaching, police force
>I asked the man what was his point, his aim, his goal, why does he do it ?
>Didn't ask you to butt in
>---> Back where you come from, thank you.
Go fuck yourself, asshole! It's a newsgroup.
Sam Wormley
> Yawn, what is your point bringing us the news ?
>
This is a USENET newsgroup, sleepyhead!
CHARTER
This will be an unmoderated newsgroup.
SCI.GEO.SATELLITE-NAV was chosen because the focus of this group is on
navigation. The SCI.SPACE hierarchy deals with various aspects of
space exploration and use, but this newsgroup deals mostly with
terrestrial applications. The fact that the space segment is in space
is almost incidental to the focus of the newsgroup.
SCI.GEO.SATELLITE-NAV will allow a centralized location for discussion
of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The charter
specifically includes the US Global Positioning System (GPS) and
Russian GLONASS, but is also open to discussion of other existing and
future satellite positioning systems.
Some topics that fall under this newsgroup charter are:
* Technical aspects of GNSS operation.
* User experiences in the use of GNSS.
* Information regarding GNSS products.
* Discussion of GNSS policy (such as GPS
selective availability).
* Extensions to basic GNSS technology, such as
differential GPS and pseudolites.
* Navigational uses of satellite systems whose primary
purpose is not navigation, such as a communication
satellite net.
Examples of topics that would not fall under the group charter are:
* Other satellite systems such as communications and
intelligence gathering, except for navigational uses of
such systems.
* Discussion of space policy in general.
* Discussion of areas that may use GNSS, such as
surveying, sailing, or aeronautics, except as they
directly relate to use of GNSS.
GPS, in particular, has turned out to be a technology with a great
deal of synergism with many fields. GPS is used, not only for
military positioning which was the original purpose, but in
applications as diverse as entomology and film making. A major intent
of this newsgroup is to share the uses to which GNSS technology is
being put, thus inspiring even more innovative uses.
While part of the SCI.GEO hierarchy, this newsgroup does not exclude
non-terrestrial uses of satellite navigation. Use of GPS to determine
space vehicle position is within the charter.
This group is also intended to function as a resource for newcomers,
who can post their questions and receive help from others who have
passed that way before.
Runge11
your language, old man.
"Happy Trails" <nom...@myplace.com> a écrit dans le message de
news:g0ftu3132du07dq7c...@4ax.com...
Runge11
"Sam Wormley" <swor...@mchsi.com> a écrit dans le message de
news:egyHj.44187$TT4.96@attbi_s22...
Jack Erbes
> That's not an answer to my question
>
It most certainly is! You are apparently too stupid to understand the
answer. Those of us that come here for the GPS related discussions and
information find those posts to be relevant.
Why would you find it necessary to criticize that?
Pick on some of the other problem, the top posters and off topic posters
for instance.
Jack
--
Jack Erbes in Ellsworth, Maine, USA - jackerbes at adelphia dot net
(also receiving email at jacker at midmaine.com)
Gregory Morrow
> Runge11 wrote:
> > That's not an answer to my question
>
> It most certainly is! You are apparently too stupid to understand the
> answer. Those of us that come here for the GPS related discussions and
> information find those posts to be relevant.
>
> Why would you find it necessary to criticize that?
>
> Pick on some of the other problem, the top posters and off topic posters
> for instance.
Lol...if you check scRunge's posting history you'll see that his
contris on every group he infests are useless...in fact 99% of most
posters have him killfiled. That guy suffers all sorts of
pathologies...
--
Best
Greg
Sam Wormley
> Yawn, what is your point bringing us the news ?
>
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Hans-J. Ude
>Ooops here come the local church goer, moral preaching, police force
>I asked the man what was his point, his aim, his goal, why does he do it ?
>Didn't ask you to butt in
>---> Back where you come from, thank you.
[TROLL DETECTED] [TARGET AIMING] [TARGET LOCKED] [ FIRE!!! ]
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| o | | | | | \ o / | | \`. | .'/ |
| /( )\ | | -- + -- | | --(+)-- | |-- *PLONK* --|
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