The Bush Administration’s Fiscal Year 2007 (FY07) budget proposal for the Department of Defense (DoD), announced in February, allocates $315,314,000 in advanced technology development for GPS, including work on the GPS III program. If approved by Congress, that would represent a sizable increase from the FY06 expenditures of more than $85 million and $33 million in FY05.

The draft budget also calls for $177,792,000 for sustainment of the GPS space and ground segments and more than $131 million for GPS user equipment.

Copyright 2006 Gibbons Media and Research LLC

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One of the trio of satellites (SV798 in slot 19) went on the air in late January. Reports from the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, quoting Russian space officials, subsequently attributed the delay to frozen fuel lines in the satellites.

The Russian Space Forces are continuing efforts to bring the final two GLONASS spacecraft launched December 25 into operation.

One of the trio of satellites (SV798 in slot 19) went on the air in late January. Reports from the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, quoting Russian space officials, subsequently attributed the delay to frozen fuel lines in the satellites.

However, that problem may be resolving itself. According to NORAD, the other two satellites are being moved into their orbital slots in the constellation. If the spacecraft can be brought on-line, GLONASS would have 16 operational satellites, including four of the modernized versions, GLONASS-M.

Russia plans to have 18 operational satellites in orbit by 2008 and is considering accelerating the completion of the constellation.

The sustained revitalization of the Russian program, which had dwindled to seven satellites in 2001, has encouraged two GNSS manufacturers — NovAtel and Trimble — to announce the availability of combined GPS/GLONASS receivers, joining Javad Navigation Systems and Topcon with GLONASS-capable equipment in the commercial market. (See articles in Industry View in March 2006 Inside GNSS magazine).

Copyright 2006 Gibbons Media and Research LLC

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Japan launched its second Multi-Functional Transport Satellite (MTSAT-2) on February 18, opening a new phase of precision air navigation and air traffic control (ATC) over the western Pacific Ocean.

The five-ton spacecraft — the heaviest flown by Japan — will operate at a 22,300-mile altitude in a circular geostationary orbit. From that location, on-board transponders will provide another link for Japan’s MTSAT Space-based Augmentation System (MSAS), relaying differential GPS corrections and integrity messages to suitably equipped users. The first satellite in the MSAS space segment, MTSAT-1R, went into orbit a year earlier.

Chief among the MSAS beneficiaries will be aircraft operating transoceanic routes across the Pacific. The improved navigation accuracy and associated communications links will allow planes to operate closer together along the most traveled routes.

In addition to the GPS navigation data, MSAS will provide datalinks to and from ATC control centers and enable the automatic transmission of aircraft locations to controllers when are out of range of ground-based ATC radars — a feature known as automatic dependent surveillance. Besides the L-band GPS broadcasts, MTSAT provides voice and data communications over Ku- and Ka-band frequencies.

MSAS operates in fashion similar to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) and provides a comparable service to the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) operated by the European Space Agency.

An H-2A rocket carried MTSAT-2 into space from the Tanegashima space center. Its operators are the Japan Civil Aviation Bureau and the Japan Meteorological Agency.  Once testing is complete, MTSAT-2 will operate permanently along the equator at 145 degrees east longitude and above the Micronesia region.

During its 10-year mission, MTSAT-2 will also serve as a weather observatory for Japanese forecasters, drawing on four infrared sensors and one in the visible wavelength. The spacecraft will also relay weather, seismic, and tidal reports from remote ground monitoring stations.

Copyright 2006 Gibbons Media and Research LLC

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