Seventeen years and more than 10 billion euros (US$11 billion) later, Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system is set to go live tomorrow, promising to outperform US and Russian rivals, while boosting regional self-reliance.
Initial services, free to use worldwide, will be available only on smartphones and navigation boxes already fitted with Galileo-compatible chips.
Some devices might only need a software update to start using the new technology and European Commission spokeswoman Mirna Talko said several smartphone giants are already making chips compatible with it.
“It will be the first time that users around the world will be able to be guided by Galileo satellites,” European Commission spokeswoman for Research, Science and Innovation Lucia Caudet said.
Somewhat fuzzy at first, the signal will be boosted with help from satellites in the US military-run Global Positioning System (GPS), growing stronger over time as orbiters are added to the now 18-strong Galileo network circling 23,222km above the Earth.
The European Commission and European Space Agency (ESA) said Galileo should be fully operational by 2020, providing time and positioning data of unprecedented accuracy.
“GPS allows a train to know which area it is in — Galileo will allow it to identify the track it is on,” said CNES president Jean-Yves Le Gall, head of the French space agency, which is one of the ESA’s 22 member nations.
Such precision would also be invaluable for safer driverless cars and nuclear power plants, as well as better telecommunications.
The civil-controlled service is also of great strategic importance for Europe, which relies on two military-run services — GPS and Russia’s GLONASS — which provide no guarantee of uninterrupted service.
It will be interoperable with these two, but also completely autonomous.
“Having a system that is somewhat independent of the US system that is controlled by the military is probably a good thing,” Rice University senior fellow in space policy George Abbey said in Houston, Texas.
This would be especially pertinent “if there were some conflicts or disagreements ... that would cause the United States to have to limit GPS,” he said.
Named after Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the project was first approved with an initial budget of about 3 billion euros and plans to be operational by 2008, but it has suffered several technical and budgetary setbacks, including the launch of two satellites into the wrong orbit in 2014.
COMMERCIAL VENTURE
The European Commission expects the project to ultimately be an important commercial venture.
Almost 10 percent of Europe’s GDP is thought to depend on satellite navigation — a figure projected to grow to about 30 percent by 2030.
By 2020, the global satellite navigation market would be valued at about 244 billion euros, the commission said.
Galileo itself is expected to add about 90 billion euros to the EU economy in its first 20 years.
The system’s groundbreaking accuracy is the result of the best atomic clocks ever flown for navigation — one per satellite — accurate to 1 second in 3 million years.
A mere billionth-of-a-second clock error can mean a positioning error of up to 30cm.
Galileo also has more satellites than either GPS or GLONASS, and better signals which carry more information.
With these features, Galileo’s free Open Service is able to track positions to within a meter, compared with several meters for GPS and GLONASS. Its signal will eventually reach areas where none is possible today — inside traffic tunnels and on roads where high buildings shield radio waves from some satellites.
SEARCH AND RESCUE
A paying service allows clients to track locations even closer, to within centimeters, and governments would have access to an encrypted continued service for use in times of crisis.
Another key feature is a service allowing rescuers to locate people lost at sea or in the mountains much faster than before.
Current satellite navigation technology can take up to three hours to track a person to within a 10km range.
“With Galileo’s Search and Rescue Service, the detection time is reduced to 10 minutes and the localization is reduced to less than 5km,” Caudet said.
Satellite navigation works by ultra-precise clocks in orbit broadcasting their time and position to Earth via radio waves traveling at the speed of light. Anyone with a receiver can combine data from at least three satellites to determine their position, speed and local time on Earth.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS