Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
The UK seems well and truly on the path to leaving the European Union. The implications for the Galileo program are still unclear, and won’t be known until Brexit negotiations are completed, at the earliest.
By Peter Gutierrez
With Wednesday’s successful Ariane 5 launch of four more Galileo satellites, the Galileo constellation grew to 26 satellites, extending the global coverage of the constellation.
By Stan Goff
Senate Seeks Report on OCX Alternative
Both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee have now passed their spending bills, largely agreeing with the White House and their House counterparts on funding levels for the GPS program with the exceptions of nearly tripling the House cut to the GPS IIIF program and taking a shot across the bow of the new GPS ground system.
By Dee Ann Divis
China sent a new BeiDou navigation satellite into orbit on a Long March-3A rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center, in the southwestern Sichuan Province, at 4:58 a.m., Tuesday, July 10.
The satellite is the 32nd of the BeiDou navigation system, and one of the BeiDou-2 family, which is the second generation of the system. The state-run Xinhua press agency confirmed the launch within two hours after liftoff.
By Inside GNSS
Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division announced that it will highlight its family of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS)-based modules and LRU solutions designed for system integrators seeking to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy Assured Position, Navigation and Timing (A-PNT) services at the 2018 Joint Navigation Conference, July 9-11 (Booth #109), the largest U.S. military Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) conference of the year with joint service and government participation.
By Inside GNSS
When talking to J. David Grossman, the new executive director of the GPS Innovation Alliance (GPSIA), one word comes up quite often: excited.
By Stan Goff
The Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR (Medium-Altitude Earth Orbit Search and Rescue) system has been in the news quite a bit of late, and with good reason. As the technology has evolved, so too has the ability to improve search and rescue operations which save lives.
The cover story for the current issue of Inside GNSS is dedicated to the Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR system and its role as a solution to support the ICAO GADSS Autonomous Distress Tracking recommendation.
By Inside GNSS
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Geosynchronous Earth Orbiting 5 Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) navigation payload, developed by Raytheon’s Intelligence, Information and Services business, is now operational and fully integrated into the WAAS network. The GEO 5 payload joins two others already on orbit in correcting GPS satellite signal ionospheric disturbances, timing issues, and minor orbit adjustments, giving users increased coverage, improved accuracy, and better reliability.
By Inside GNSS
Over at least half a dozen years the GPS III Follow On program has taken a number of dramatic turns only to wind up, in true soap opera fashion, with the same leading characters headed to the altar.
At the end of the latest episode, the field of suitors for the multi-billion-dollar GPS IIIF contract narrowed suddenly in April when two of the three corporate hopefuls abruptly left the field.
By Dee Ann Divis
Russia launched a Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket from the Plesetsk space center on Sunday to orbit a GLONASS-M satellite, the Russian Defense Ministry said in a press release this week.
By Inside GNSS
The issue at hand is whether the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should allow a change in the use of frequencies close to those used by GPS. Virginia-based Ligado Networks wants to repurpose its satellite frequencies to also support ground-based telecom services. Testing done several years ago and expanded upon more recently has shown such a system could seriously interfere with GPS receivers.
Some three months after a meeting of the key federal agencies using and running the GPS program, they have yet to release a letter stating their recommendation on whether to allow the development of a potentially interfering telecommunication service.
By Dee Ann Divis
Today, it appears that the Cospas-Sarsat MEOSAR system, relying on payloads deployed on GNSS constellations (Galileo, GPS, GLONASS), offers all the conditions to meet the new recommendation of ICAO for ADT-system for Commercial Aviation, with a new generation of in-flight triggered beacons, identical to the current ELT in terms of aircraft integration, but capable of receiving triggers and cancellation events from the avionics, from the crew or from internal sensors, and of detecting and managing their inhibitions to maintain the capability to raise alerts and be localized in any situation.
By Inside GNSS
Yet another milestone has been reached as the Galileo global navigation satellite system inches closer to completion of its entire constellation comprising of 24 operational satellites plus spares in three orbital planes as the last two Galileo satellites of the second tranche were sent to Kourou on May 31.
By Stan Goff
