One subject, more than any other, preoccupied attendees of this year’s European Space Conference. In a stirring welcome address, High-Representative/Vice-President of the European Commission Josep Borrell Fontelles told the assembly, “One year ago, we were just on the eve of war. Now, we are in the middle of a war, so the security of Europe in space is a very timely subject.” Our regular readers know that subject has been very timely for a while.

“Last year,” Borrell continued, “we stressed the increased level of threats in the space domain, and we now believe we need a change of paradigm. Space will become a kind of battlefield, of competition and confrontation. Satellite imagery and communications have proved to be game changers for the Ukrainian armed forces and the civilian population.”

Borrell recalled the cyber-attack on Viasat on the night of the Russian invasion that knocked out communications for several days, affecting neighboring countries as well as Ukraine. “This has revealed our own vulnerabilities,” Borrell said, “affecting our own member states. These are critical infrastructures that we need. If they fail, our economies, our entire lives, will be disrupted. In 2021, Russia tested a kinetic anti-satellite weapon. It was an irresponsible act that signaled to anyone that Russia is prepared to put anyone’s satellites at risk.”

Timo Pesonen, director-general, DG DEFIS, European Commission, also recalled the days just before the start of the war. “A year ago, if somebody in this room had asked who thought Putin was going to attack the capital of Ukraine in one month’s time, I’m not so sure how many of us would have raised our hands. Of course, there was intelligence information around that he was gathering troops at the border, but I think we were all hoping for a miracle to happen.”

What They Thought About That

The 15th edition of the conference was a return to form, that is to say a return to format. Two years ago, In 2021, the conference was mostly a ‘virtual’ online affair, due to the crisis we need not name. Then, in 2022, it went back to being held in person, but many habitual attendees stayed home, choosing to keep their distance until the coast was well and truly clear. By all accounts, that edition was a rather forlorn affair.

This year’s event felt like old times. The big plenary room was full to bursting, everyone was breathing deeply and the lunch hall, lobbies, corridors and side rooms were abuzz. And, as they will, fresh from the affray in the big room, people exchanged views candidly once outside. Having heard a number of high-profile presenters expressing their surprise and dismay at the events of February 2022, more than one corridor commentator expressed their own surprise at the surprise. “Didn’t Russia invade Georgia a few years ago?” said one, off the record. “Didn’t they just annex Crimea?”

Another well-known personality at the conference whispered, confidentially, “We were hearing every day from the intelligence experts. Of course we could see what was about to happen. There was no surprise.” Still another participant cited the regime in question’s repeated past “criminal” actions, saying the surprise was perhaps more about the absolute scale of the thing.

In 2017, Inside GNSS published an article titled, “EU and Russia: Lost in Space?” that questioned the advisability of maintaining a dependent relationship with Russia in the wake of that country’s aggressive actions against a familiar target. According to the article:

In April, the United States officially pulled the plug on almost all space cooperation with Russia as a result of the latter nation’s intervention in Ukraine.

According to a Space News report, cited in the 2017 article, Europe did not follow suit:

At the height of the bloodletting in eastern Ukraine last June, ESA [European Space Agency] Director-General Jean-Jaques Dordain said, “The European Space Agency has seen no signs that its relations with Russia will be curtailed as a result of the confrontation between Russia and the West concerning Russia’s actions in Ukraine.”

Even though:

Speaking in Brussels, one unnamed European official said, “The situation in Ukraine is very tense indeed, with many obvious consequences on the relationship between Russia and Europe.”

The Launcher Crisis

So much for warning signs. Europe now has a very present situation to contend with. In an era of ever-accumulating crises, we may add another: ‘The European Launcher Crisis.’ Borrell said, “This war was a wake-up call. We are becoming much more aware of the dependencies on foreign suppliers. For example, when the Russian Soyuz teams suddenly left the spaceport of Kourou, they put in danger our launch capabilities.”

“WE BUILT GALILEO IN RESPONSE TO AN EXISTING NAVIGATION NETWORK THAT WE ALL KNOW VERY WELL. TODAY, GALILEO IS PROVIDING THE MOST ACCURATE SIGNAL FOR NAVIGATION, FOR POSITIONING, AND THIS IS SOMETHING WHERE EUROPE CAN BE VERY PROUD.”

Josef Aschbacher, high-representative/vice-president, director general, ESA

But war isn’t the only problem. Josef Aschbacher, Director General of ESA, in his presentation of 2022 highlights, acknowledged other setbacks: “We had the successful launch of our MTG satellite on the 13th of December [onboard Ariane 5], but also just before Christmas, on the 20th of December, we had the failure of our Vega-C launcher, after we had had a successful inaugural flight in July, earlier in the year.”

According to reports, the Vega-C’s Zefiro 40 second stage deviated from its intended trajectory following a loss of pressure, resulting in reentry over the Atlantic, less than 1,000 km from its launch site. Two Airbus Defence and Space dual-use Pléiades satellites were lost in the misfire. Zefiro is a family of solid-fuel rocket motors developed by Avio.

“And this puts Europe in a very critical situation on launchers,” Aschbacher said, “due to the situation of our delays on Ariane 6.” Also in 2022, ESA again delayed the first flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 launcher, this time to late 2023.

“With this, and with the halt of the Soyuz launches from Kourou and the Vega-C failure, Europe is in a very serious situation. Guaranteed access to space is a top priority for Europe, for ESA, for all of us, because if we cannot guarantee access to space, we will seriously shut down launching of infrastructure on which we depend.” That includes completed Galileo satellites currently sitting on the ground, ready for launch.

Aschbacher said it is crucial to get Ariane 6 and a safe and functioning Vega-C onto the launch pad as quickly as possible, “but we also need to invest in the future, to engage a new group of launchers, micro-launchers, mini-launchers. And later we will need reusable launchers, after Ariane 6 and Vega-C. This is a weakness of Europe today.” Stéphane Israël, CEO of Arianespace, agreed: “In the long term, we will need a heavy, reusable launcher. For the European flagship programs, Galileo and so on, you will need a big launcher, no doubt.”

For now, the waiting goes on. A spokesperson for ESA told Inside GNSS the agency is actively seeking a solution for launching grounded Galileo satellites, which can include non-European (and non-Soyuz) launchers.

Self-Reliance Versus Dependency

An unintentionally provocative take: For all its ingenuity and scientific excellence, and in spite of Jules Verne, Europe has lagged behind as a source of inspiration in space. At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union drew the hearts and minds of the world toward the stars, on the tails of their military-fueled space race. Today, the Chinese government has managed to link its space program to the country’s immense sense of pride and their belief in its extraordinary destiny. Europe, on the other hand, for all its technical achievements and steady reliability, has remained a rather polite, very competent but otherwise low-key partner seeker. Not, one should add, without success.

Aschbacher said, “We built Galileo in response to an existing navigation network that we all know very well. Today, Galileo is providing the most accurate signal for navigation, for positioning, and this is something where Europe can be very proud.”

Miguel Romay, general manager navigation systems, GMV said, “When I started in navigation more than 30 years ago, Europe was completely out of the game. We had GPS, GLONASS and nothing from Europe. We started to move toward satellite navigation, dreaming about having something similar to what the Americans had.”

Must Europe always turn to others for inspiration? In this time of geopolitical turmoil and economic uncertainty, who will serve as Europe’s model? And on whom will it depend for help?

”EIGHT YEARS AGO, I FLEW TO SPACE ON A RUSSIAN VEHICLE, THE SOYUZ. A YEAR AGO, I FLEW ON A U.S. VEHICLE, NOT EVEN A GOVERNMENT VEHICLE BUT A VEHICLE PROVIDED BY A PRIVATE COMPANY AS A SERVICE. YOU HAVE THAT EXPERIENCE AND YOU START TO SCRATCH YOUR HEAD, AND THINK, ‘WELL, THIS IS GREAT. I LIKE INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION, BUT WHAT ABOUT FLYING IN A EUROPEAN VEHICLE?’”

Samantha Cristoforetti, ESA Astronaut

“We cannot implement the U.S. model,” Israël said. “The U.S. spends five times more on space than Europe. We can take some lessons, but the copycat strategy will not work. And this should not be about Europeans competing against each other. This is the U.S. and China competing against Europe. It’s time to organize the industrial base in order to compete. We see how it goes in the U.S., with the Inflation Reduction Act, how they have changed overnight the competitiveness of their companies against us. Let’s not be naive, let’s take the bull by the horns and make it happen.”

André-Hubert Roussel, president of Eurospace, said, “We don’t benefit from the measures that have been put in place by some of our competing nations, specifically for the U.S. industry. We are facing nearly 10% inflation in Europe. It’s going to cost our space industry 500-750 million euros in extra costs this year. We have to tackle this with our partners, starting with ESA and the EC [European Commission]. We need venture capitalists, and we need to make sure we have a level playing field with the U.S.”

Aschbacher said, “Today, Europe is not capable of launching its own astronauts, with its own capabilities, into space, because we are flying with our good friends and strong partners of NASA, the Americans. In the past few years, we were flying with Russia, but if you look 10 years into the future, I think Europe should seriously consider having its own capability. This is much bigger than space. It is geopolitical, it is societal, it is about the unity of Europe. We are not fast enough and we are not bold enough.”

Speaking of astronauts, ESA Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti said, “Eight years ago, I flew to space on a Russian vehicle, the Soyuz. A year ago, I flew on a U.S. vehicle, not even a government vehicle but a vehicle provided by a private company as a service. You have that experience and you start to scratch your head, and think, ‘Well, this is great. I like international cooperation, but what about flying in a European vehicle?’ At this point, the question is what’s wrong with us? Why do we not have that ambition?”

”GALILEO HAS BEEN DESIGNED TO BE VERY ROBUST.
THE SPECTRUM OF SERVICES THAT ARE BEING DEPLOYED, STARTING FROM THE BASIC SERVICE, ADDING AUTHENTICATION, THE HIGH-ACCURACY SERVICE, THE PRS [PUBLIC REGULATED SERVICE], EMERGENCY SERVICES THAT WILL BE DEPLOYED IN THE FUTURE, SAFETY-OF-LIFE, WHICH IS PROVIDED BY EGNOS, ALL THIS NEEDS TO BE ASSURED.”

Javier Benedicto, director of navigation, ESA

“We live at the end of an era of happy globalization,” said Thomas Dermine, Belgium’s State Secretary for Economic Recovery and Strategic Investments, in charge of Science Policy. “We see a rise in geopolitical tension, we see commercial tension, we see a rise in protectionism. If you look at the American Inflation Reduction Act, it impacts all sectors. It is going to impact the space industry. A few years ago, we were seeing all kinds of cooperation with other parts of the world. We see today that our cooperation with Russia is completely ended. In China we see rising tension, and even with the Americans. We need to rely more on our own capabilities, because you don’t know what the future will be.”

Then Came PNT

Amid all the soul-searching, conference attendees suddenly found themselves faced with a series of presentations on what it all means for the positioning, navigation and timing troops. “It was already there before the war,” Pesonen said, “but the war has certainly underlined it. Resilience is a key word for us.”

”WE ARE OFFERING SERVICES THROUGH DIFFERENT SIGNALS, AT DIFFERENT FREQUENCIES, AND THIS IS PRETTY GOOD AGAINST INTERFERENCE. THEN WE HAVE OUR AUTHENTICATION SERVICE, WHICH IS COMING UP THIS YEAR, AND THERE WE WILL BE PRETTY GOOD AGAINST SPOOFING. WE CAN SPEAK ABOUT THE SECOND-GENERATION SATELLITES, WHICH ARE GOING TO PROVIDE MORE ROBUST SIGNALS.”

Paul Flamant, Head of Unit, Satellite Navigation, DG DEFIS, European Commission

Paul Flamant, Head of Unit, Satellite Navigation, DG DEFIS, European Commission, assessed the state of resiliency of Europe’s GNSS systems: “We are offering services through different signals, at different frequencies, and this is pretty good against interference. Then we have our authentication service, which is coming up this year, and there we will be pretty good against spoofing. We can speak about the second-generation satellites, which are going to provide more robust signals.

“But also,” he said, “it’s very important in terms of satellite navigation resilience that we keep our good agreements with those brilliant people that are on the other side of the Atlantic. We have agreements with the Americans, and it is very important that we continue this collaboration.”

Flamant also cited the EU’s European Radio Navigation Plan. “I invite people to read it,” he said. “In it, we call on people to come up with new resilience solutions, and we’ve been trying to see what really needs to be done, in terms of navigation but also in terms of timing. There were the workshops organized recently at the Joint Research Center at ISPRA, where we could see what other timing and navigation systems exist.”

“From the point of view of operations,” EUSPA Executive Director Rodrigo da Costa said, “we have two control centers, we have two security monitoring centers, so there’s a lot of resilience in there, but we also exercise that resilience. We carry out simulations, a number of simulated situations, working with our external action service, where we simulate techniques and responses. This is incredibly important in order to ensure the preparedness of our operational teams.”

A New Architecture

ESA Director of Navigation Javier Benedicto said, “Satellite navigation really has a very strategic dimension for all of us. It has become a commodity with respect to our daily life. It contributes to economy, but also to implementing government policy. This fundamental nature creates a notion of dependency. We depend every minute on it, and therefore there is an expectation on the part of users. These are systems that have to work all the time.

“This in turn creates responsibility, for the people who conceive the system,” Benedicto said. “Galileo has been designed to be very robust. The spectrum of services that are being deployed, starting from the basic service, adding authentication, the High-Accuracy Service, the PRS [public regulated service], emergency services that will be deployed in the future, safety-of-life, which is provided by EGNOS, all this needs to be assured.”

Benedicto outlined the new LEO PNT program adopted at the most recent ESA ministerial conference. “This program is the largest in the world of its nature,” he said. “It brings a new dimension, not based anymore on geostationary or MEO satellites but also on LEO satellites. The trick of the business is to interconnect all that from the user perspective. The user does not know or care if the signal is coming from a LEO or a MEO or GEO satellite.

“We will also see an evolution affecting the EGNOS service, today based on geostationary signal broadcast, but in the future also to be broadcast most probably from MEO and LEO satellites. And we see a future in deploying navigation signals in new frequency bands, not only in the L band but also in lower bands and higher bands. All this leads to a multi-layered PNT architecture.”

A Constellation for Digital Resilience

IRIS2 (Infrastructure for resilience, interconnectivity and security by satellite) is the EU’s newest space-based infrastructure, being mounted in record time and offering enhanced communication capacities to governmental users and businesses, and delivering high-speed internet broadband in connectivity dead zones. Initial services are scheduled for launch as early as 2024, with full operational capability by 2027.

Benedicto said, “IRIS2, Galileo and EGNOS all have to be connected, because, at the end of the day, we want to reach the smartphone, we want to reach the airplane cockpit, the dashboard of the autonomous vehicle, and this requires a combination of sensors and techniques for both communication and navigation. This will require the use of optical technologies, quantum communication, quantum encryption, and with all of this, I am sure that Europe will remain at the forefront of resilient PNT.”

On that very inspiring note, we leave the 15th European Space Conference, with apologies to all who were not cited. We will meet again, and so say not adieu, but au revoir. Until next time…

The post Brussels View: European Space Conference 2023 Takes a Hard Look appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Every GNSS has experienced a failure. On January 26, 2016, an error in the GPS data upload system caused incorrect data to be transmitted from the satellites on the L1 band used by most commercial GPS receivers. The problem was resolved within six hours, although some users experienced problems for as much as twelve hours. The next day, the US Air Force (USAF) released a full statement explaining that the problem was caused by ground system software when one satellite was decommissioned.

Russia’s GLONASS and the Chinese BeiDou system have also experienced technical glitches, of greater or lesser severity. But what happened to Galileo in July 2019 was unprecedented. By the European Commission’s own account, the total system failure lasted from 10–17 July. During that time, according to the European GNSS Agency (GSA), “A team composed of GSA experts, industry, ESA and Commission, worked together 24/7 to address the incident.”

According to a European Commission spokesperson, “The technical issue was solely related to the ground infrastructure in a Galileo control centre, not to the Galileo satellites. The incident took place during an important upgrade of the control centres, when the standard redundancy between the centres was not available. The incident impacted the time and orbit determination function and prevented the correct generation of navigation messages.”

That it took all of a week to resolve the problem is surprising, but equally troubling was the lack of communication that accompanied the outage. The official Notice Advisories (NAGUs) posted on the European GNSS Service Centre website were slow to appear and provided little detail. Meanwhile, no voice was heard, no face was seen, no representative of the program was available for an official comment.

Eventually, some days into the event, the GSA did post a statement on its website, taking responsibility and even apologizing for the failure. But then it attempted to minimize its import by arguing that, after all, Galileo is still in its “initial services” phase and therefore should not be expected to work without interruption. Among many Galileo’s supporters, that message fell flat.

Users of smartphones may or may not have noticed the Galileo outage at all, but the design engineers, systems integrators, application entrepreneurs and service providers that had invested heavily in Galileo did certainly notice, and were severely discouraged.

Duty to Report

During that week when Galileo was offline, Inside GNSS received many messages and questions from its readers and correspondents. The messages were informative and important. They revealed concern, disappointment, even fear. Inside GNSS received these messages not because it represents the Galileo program in any way, but because, for many who were surprised by how the Galileo failure was playing out, Inside GNSS was apparently the only responsive ear to which their messages could be delivered.

We believe the comments of these correspondents may be useful to the Galileo program.

One GNSS industry executive wrote: “It’s inexcusable how long it took after the failure occurred until the user base was informed. Even worse the SIS/health flag showed no problems until the very end. I was surprised. A total constellation failure should not be happening in the modern world of testing and simulation. The reaction was slow and until this day has been very secretive and political. As there has been no official communication, all my theories [concerning the technical cause of the failure] are derived from Inside GNSS!”

In the absence of proactive and timely messaging from the Galileo program to service providers who market products in part based on their Galileo features, these providers were effectively left “holding the bag.”

A European commentator expressed concern while watching and waiting for information: “The handling of the situation was a failure in itself; the first NAGU published 14 hours after the event, no information about the cause and no indication about the time to recovery, followed by a second one with more or less the same approach.

“Galileo is strategic for Europe, it has managed to get close to completion, but the organization and its mindset need to change radically. They have not yet fully understood what providing a critical service means.”

Further Reaction

After the technical crash was resolved, the comments became more circumspect. A representative from the automobile industry told us, “The Galileo outage raises a key operational concern for vehicle manufacturers. While Galileo satellites were evidently healthy between July 11–18, it took the GSA control segment six days to identify the root cause and fix the outage. This clearly shows a weakness in ground operations that has implications to worldwide users. I would like to see a statement from the GSA about how they intend to safeguard against similar outages in the future.”

A North American GNSS engineer wrote, “I look forward to Galileo becoming fully operational—these are very useful signals! This was likely a good learning experience, but learning experiences are rarely pleasant. I’m looking forward to the constellation status update at ION GNSS+ in September.”

Finally, an academic involved in development of one of the major non-US, non-European GNSS programs told us, “In my opinion, in space engineering, due to a large number of links, brief failure is inevitable, such as satellite state abnormal in a short period of time. However, I wonder why Galileo system had been down for so long this time. I guess this failure has exposed more than technical problems, there should also be management problems.”

Answers?

As a result of the July episode, the Galileo program now has a major branding problem on its hands. It needs to explain what went wrong and how it will move forward.

The unprecedented technical failure and the protracted search for a fix to the underlying technical issue will be challenging to explain.The subsequent communication lapse exposed what is perhaps the program’s greatest weakness: inadequate governance arrangements.

The program rests on three pillars. One pillar is ESA, one of the premier organizations of any kind in the world. It has carried out countless space missions of the highest order, flawlessly. Another pillar is the GSA, comprising a group of carefully selected and world-leading experts in the field of GNSS, including contingency planners and rapid-response teams, capable of delivering at least near-military-level reliability.

Under the current Galileo governance structure, neither of these organizations is able to speak on its own initiative concerning the Galileo failure. This is why we have been unable to relay to you any words on the subject from any person within these two organizations. This is in turn because, under the Galileo governance structure, both entities are subservient to the third pillar, the European Commission. Under the circumstances surrounding the July 2019 incident, ESA and the GSA could only repeat the Commission’s own prepared words. Only the Commission could inform us. Unfortunately, the European Commission was probably the least suited of the three to respond to the need for direct, frank and open communication. And apparently it still is.

A few days ago we sent some questions to the relevant European Commission spokesperson, the only person officially allowed to communicate with the press on this matter. The description that we received of the technical root cause, cited above, months after the failure, remains vague.

More surprisingly, the Commission continues to use the “it’s-only-the-initial-phase” excuse to minimize the significance of the event. The official response reads, “The interruption of services was indeed unfortunate. But it is important to bear in mind that Galileo is, since December 2016, in its ‘Initial Services’ phase…It is not uncommon for a complex global navigation system in its ‘initial services’ phase, to experience temporary issues affecting the quality of the signal.”

What’s surprising about this response is that key Galileo operatives within the Commission are aware that the “initial-phase” explanation was roundly rejected by the GNSS community when it was first offered, months ago.

The spokesperson’s service continued to vaunt the program’s communications response, in the form of the NAGUs issued on the European GNSS Service Centre website. The GNSS community, by and large, found those NAGUs inadequate.

These official responses, crafted to deflect criticism while revealing little new information, do not seem to be in touch with the GNSS community. They do not sound like any of the familiar “voices of Galileo” who know us and whom we recognize and respect.

Who Speaks for Galileo?

Galileo is managed within the European Commission as part of the EC Directorate General (DG) for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, also known as DG GROW. As its name implies, this DG manages much more than just the EU’s space programs. It also oversees initiatives related to EU competitiveness, financing for small businesses, European chemicals regulation, CE marking, etc., and it contributes to a variety of other initiatives related to the European single market.

All the activities carried out by DG GROW are under the responsibility of the politically appointed EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, and of that commissioner’s hand-picked cabinet. The Commissioner, who is not necessarily a GNSS expert, indeed who is not necessarily an expert in any of the fields covered within the DG that he/she oversees, serves for five years and then is replaced by a new Commissioner.

There are many well-known and trusted operatives within the Galileo program, both at the Commission and at the GSA, who are perfectly capable and who were, we know, willing and eager to address the system failure openly and in real time when their intervention could have made a difference.

But their hands were tied. The clearance they need to speak about anything as sensitive as the Galileo failure can come only from “cabinet level,” that is, from the team that immediately surrounds the responsible Commissioner. The Galileo program was ready to respond but it was held back by operatives who were possibly concerned more about politics than serving the Galileo user community.

One of the reasons details about the failure were and continue to be kept under wraps is that once the nature of the technical failure is divulged, the identities of the contracted partners responsible for the failure are likely to be deduced. That might prove embarrassing to those contracted partners. If, on the other hand, responsibility for the failure were to be incorrectly attributed to such a partner, they might be justified in seeking retribution for injuries sustained to their reputations. While these are probably real and valid concerns, they are also clearly political concerns.

Many now recognize that, under certain circumstances, such as those that occurred during the July 2019 failure, the Galileo program might be better served if the people who run the program were allowed to do their work without this kind of restriction.

Not as Bad as All that

The European Commission is a powerful tool for achieving real progress of a steady, dependable and valuable nature. It is a fundamental EU institution with crucial roles to play. Establishing overall policy goals, gathering political support, obtaining financing and applying that financing to the pursuit of world-class research and many crucial policy initiatives are only some examples.

However, due to its particular management arrangements, specifically as they concern the Galileo program, it was unable to respond effectively and quickly to the July 2019 crash.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: Galileo will change. The changes need not be drastic. It might be enough for the European Commission to allow its own Galileo unit to operate with a little more autonomy under certain extenuating circumstances. Just let them do their jobs. We leave that to the Commission to decide.

Future Perspectives

“If nothing else,” someone suggested, “Galileo has been a fantastic experiment and will serve as a model of international cooperation for future generations.”

Unlike GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou, which are largely single-nation programs, Galileo has required the coming together of 28 very different countries. The variety of thought, culture and tradition among European countries makes that a challenge. It’s a challenge faced every day by the European Union, and with gusto.

“Whatever happens, Galileo will be held up as an example of how to work together, and in some cases how not to work together,” another source commented. “In that sense at least it already has enormous value. The new challenges facing today’s world are, after all, global and require a level of cooperation that has been uncommon up to this point. Just look at terrorism, the migration crisis and environmental protection, climate change. We have seen the difficulties that these challenges involve in terms of international cooperation.”

Is Galileo then just a case study? An example? If so then right now it needs to be an example of how to learn from one’s mistakes. It must now be an example of agility, flexibility, and perhaps even humility, in the face of failure.

The Galileo system was famously promoted from its inception as a non-military system. But other GNSS programs demonstrate that there are some things military organizations can do quite well. Indeed, there may be some tasks that require a more military mindset, such as the delivery of a critical day-to-day global utility.

Last January, EC Commissioner Bienkowska famously said, “We need to promote a new European approach. We need our own European vision, not look to others.” After a burst of applause from her European audience, she continued, “For example in the US, they have a national space council, attached directly to the President. Why couldn’t we have a European Space Council attached directly to the European Council or to its president?”

Bienkowska was right on both counts. Europe can move forward and succeed as Europe, learning from its mistakes, adapting and evolving. It can and should continue to look to its international partners, to seek examples abroad of how GNSS can work. In 1777, the young Marquis de Lafayette said to General George Washington, “It is not to teach but to learn that I come hither.”

We now understand that the Galileo program has invited certain key representatives of the GNSS industry, among others, to a “Galileo post mortem,” to take place on September 9. We expect that some listening and learning will occur at that event. We hope the proceedings will be made available in real time to the widest possible public. As yet, we know of no representatives of the press who have been invited.

This could become a great defining—or redefining—moment for Galileo, as it moves into a new phase. We all eagerly await Galileo’s next moves and next words.

The post Brussels View: Lessons to Be Learned From Galileo Signal Outage appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Ivan Revnivykh is head of GLONASS Application Division at Roscosmos. His academic career included study and research in France and Italy, and he currently represents GLONASS in numerous international cooperative actions, all of which makes him a familiar face among the global satellite-based navigation community.

“I grew up in the countryside outside of Moscow,” Revnivykh told Inside GNSS. “My home town is Korolyov, near Elk Island National Park.” Not coincidentally, Korolyov is also the home of the Russian space engineering and ISS mission control center.

Revnivykh was born with a passion for GNSS in his blood. His father is the noted GLONASS expert Sergey Revnivykh.Ivan Revnivykh said, “My father started working for the space flight mission control center of the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIImash) in 1978, before I was born.”

The senior Revnivykh had many important tasks to carry out within the Russian space program, but he made time for his son, sometimes mingling professional and fatherly responsibilities, as when he occasionally took his son with him to the mission control center on weekends. These were important experiences for the youngster, and the memories, Ivan said, have remained with him all through his life.

Thus, young Ivan was always aware of and interested in the work his father was doing. And who wouldn’t be? Since 1995, father Sergey has been in charge of national and international projects in satellite navigation on behalf of Roscosmos, the Russian State Space Corporation.

A willingness to work hard and the determination to solve complex problems were among the traits passed from father to son. “My father was and still is a crazy workaholic,” Revnivykh said with a grin. “He is a man who can become totally involved in the things he deals with. Of course all of my father’s activities while I was growing up left an imprint on me. I’m sure I would not be doing what I am doing today were it not for this early awareness.”

At the far Eastern end of the Asian continent, still in his home country of Russia, Revnivykh spent his childhood summers on Sakhalin Island, on the Pacific Coast. From the age of five Revnivykh passed about 10 summers there, running, climbing mountains, riding bikes and fishing for salmon with his cousins, the children of his father’s sister.

“My father grew up on Sakhalin, in a family of a mining engineers. His father, my grandfather, eventually become a CEO in the island’s coal industry. My grandmother was a mine surveyor, an underground navigation expert, if you will.”

For those not familiar with the remote paradise, Sakhalin Island is a vast, mountainous and heavily forested wilderness, home to bears, foxes, otters, and sables, as well as reindeer and other deer species. There is some isolated but important industrial development, and the island is bounded on its east coast by some of the most productive waters in the North Pacific. “It’s really mad,” Revnivykh said, “Sakhalin is an amazing place, with nature and ocean.

“All in all, it was a very agreeable childhood,” he said. Among other family members who made a big difference were his two grandfathers. “They taught me how to make things by hand, to craft, shoot and hunt. They showed me how to take pictures with old film cameras and to do other boyish things. I had a lot of fun growing up.”

Next Step

Young Revnivykh had an exciting future to look forward to, although he didn’t yet know exactly what kind of work he wanted to do. He was a good student and excelled in the sciences. “I knew for sure that I would be working in a technical field. Anything that involved science and technologies I knew would be a fun area for me to work in. As for my going to university, my parents and I never quarreled. They both supported my decision when I chose the Moscow Aviation Institute.”

In 2002, Revnivykh started worked on two degrees in parallel at the prestigious Institute. He received a bachelor’s degree in Economics in 2007 and a master’s degree in Systems Analyses and Control in 2008, specializing in simulation and operation research in organizational and technical systems. When he graduated, Revnivykh joined Sergey Karutin’s team at JCS (Russian Space Systems) working on the GLONASS System of Differential Correction and Monitoring (SDCM), the Russian correlate to the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS).

Karutin, who is now General Designer of the GLONASS system, is another person who has played a big part in Revnivykh’s life and career. “Karutin is open-minded, very smart and an extremely well organized person who always has an exact target to move towards and to reach for,” Revnivykh said. “For me he is an excellent example of a leader.”

Confirmation

“I could say my ‘GNSS Aha!’ moment came when I participated in the International Summer School on GNSS in 2009, organized by the European Space Agency in Berchtesgaden, Germany,” Revnivykh said. “There were students and young professionals from about 20 countries talking about GNSS as a key component of the world’s information infrastructure, new market capabilities and future innovative trends.”

The exchange of ideas was highly stimulating. One key takeaway for Revnivykh was that in today’s increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world, satellite navigation requires a truly interdisciplinary approach.

“The Summer School gave me a great opportunity to exchange experience with my international colleagues, to upgrade my skills and to understand what I wanted to do with my professional life. It was all done in an informal atmosphere, and with free drinks! That helped!” Back at work, starting in 2010, Revnivykh became more and more deeply involved in SDCM system design and development. He worked to install three reference stations in Antarctica and one in Brazil. “As a GNSS professional, dealing with SDCM, and especially the work we did in Antarctica, was really pivotal for me,” he said. “I was in charge of deployment of three SDCM reference stations, dealing with preparation, transportation and organization of construction and commissioning works, all with a team of brilliant engineers.”

Revnivykh had to work within the limitations of a short Antarctic summer season, with strict demands in terms of station location and without the ability to study sites visually; the only photos available had been made by polar explorers. The Russian Antarctic station Bellingshausen was chosen as the first site. This was followed by Novolazarevskaya station in 2011 and Progress station in 2012, the last being the most difficult and complex to set up. “In our free time we discovered the surrounding area and taught some penguins to fly,” Revnivykh said. “But seriously, deploying and maintaining any facilities in Antarctica is as challenging as doing the same thing in space.”

New Connections

The following year Revnivykh was back in the classroom, this time in a completely new setting, and his rise on the international scene was about to begin. “I felt that I still had a few things to learn,” he said, “so I enrolled myself in the

Aerospace MBA program at the Toulouse Business School in France. I can tell you, Toulouse was a hard nut. 24/7 studies in an international, multicultural team, with all possible challenges and advantages. The study was in English, but the life was in French, and as I had never studied this language before, I faced some day-to-day difficulties, like dealing with the bank. Kind of important.”

His coursework focused on Northern Sea Route Impact on the Aerospace Industry. “During my studies, I was able to structure my own lessons and make good use of them practically,” he recalled, “bearing in mind the modern international approach to doing business and labor organization. What was really important and great for me was that I made good friends and connections there, with French, Australian and Japanese people.”

It was a period of great personal growth, and of course the fun was never-ending. The program lasted for 14 months, from 2013-2014, five of which were spent as a trainee at Thales Alenia Space in Rome, Italy. “When it was time for the internship in Rome,” he said, “I decided to bring my car down from Moscow. I wanted to be more flexible and to be able to travel in my free time. I did the trip in my car in a week with a good friend of mine. On the way back, by the way, when I’d completed my studies, I nailed the same route in three days, including a stop at the Oktoberfest in Munich. It was a wild party and a great way to draw a line under my Europe studies!”

When in Rome, he did as the Romans did. He ate pizza and joined a rock-climbing club to free his mind and stay fit. And he spent a summer making more of those special memories that last a lifetime.

“I was busy with the optimization of an assembly line of one of telecommunication satellites, O3b and GlobalStar second generation,” he said. “Research undertaken during my traineeship revealed some interesting features not only of satellite assembly but also concerning the impact of human factors in the aerospace industry.

“Rome was very different compared to France. I was working in an office just above a satellite assembly line, with very kind and interesting engineers who really are proud of their job and with an extreme passion for coffee and sun. It was not hard to complete my master’s degree at Thales. The people were open and ready to answer all of my questions.”

Love Chimes In

His academic career at an end, Revnivykh had one more very important task to undertake before moving on with his professional life: getting married. “Following my return from Rome,” he said, still grinning, “a good friend of mine from university organized a party where I met Anna. She was also involved in satellite navigation. As it turned out she even knew my father and had worked with him on some projects. So she was from my world.”

Anna is a graduate of Lomonossov Moscow State University, specialized in linguistics. She currently works in the international department of the Information and Analysis Center for Positioning, Navigation and Timing. She routinely forms part of the Russian delegation at international meetings and committees relating to satellite navigation.

“We were married in 2016 in Korolyov city,” Revnivykh said.”We honeymooned in Vienna, in conjunction with certain parallel United Nations activities: a meeting of the International Committee on GNSS!” The Ivan-and-Anna connection has been a fruitful one, as we shall learn.

Back to Work

“When I came back to Russia,” Revnivykh said, “I worked at TsNIImash for one year and then took up my current position as head of GLONASS Application Division at Roscosmos. My team deals with state R&D within the Federal Program on GLONASS Sustainment, Development and Use.”

Revnivykh is currently working to complete R&D and preparations for the launch of a small retroreflector spacecraft, and he has recently organized and ensured the implementation of R&D projects to create a GLONASS system measuring network (RIMS) on the territory of the Russian Federation and in Antarctica, to provide high-precision navigation for users. He is also charged with implementing results of a wide range of interesting and vital R&D initiatives around the expanded use of GNSS in the transport industry (ERA GLONASS).

Very importantly, Revnivykh coordinates international activities related to GNSS compatibility and interoperability. “Together with leading research institutes,” he said, “we represent the GLONASS system within UN initiatives, such as the International Committee on GNSS and ICAO.” Revnivykh therefore, in a very real way, displays the international face of GLONASS, a cornerstone GNSS program and a true model of excellence, initiative and originality for similar programs around the world.

Foundation Firm

Underpinning all the work he does at Roscosmos, Ivan Revnivykh’s bedrock remains his family. He maintains a good relationship with his parents, and runs into his father very regularly, thanks to their common work in the GLONASS program.”

His aunt still lives on Sakhalin Island, although the cousins he used to run with have moved away, one to Australia, and another to the south of Russia. “We follow each other on social media these days,” he said, “and it’s fine for all of us.”

Closer to home, his wife Anna, at the time of this writing, was on maternity leave; she delivered a second beautiful girl, Daria, in late August.

“Our daughter Elizabeth is two and we are expecting a new baby girl this summer,” Ivan said at the time, grinning more broadly than ever. A new generation of Revnivykhs sets forth on the grand adventure.

Combining life and career is a challenge, Ivan acknowledged, as so many will agree. “I try to spend as much time with my daughter as I can. We ride a bicycle together or go hiking with her sitting in a special kid carrier. I suppose with the second baby, only more and newer challenges are on the way.”

Revnivykh said he does like to apply his engineering skills to his daily, non-working life. “My dream now is to get into CNC [computer numerical control, used in 3D printing technologies] and produce some useful cycling equipment or things for interior design.”

He still likes to get on a bike and ride like the wind. He did a lot of mountain biking in his youth. “I am still into it, now more into Enduro MTB, which delivers the fun!” he said. That’s rugged stuff, with steep uphill and downhill sections.

At the beginning of this profile we posited that Revnivykh was born with a passion for GNSS in his blood, but clearly there is more to him than that. He was born with a passion for life. He has shown it and continues to show it in his work, in his family life, and in all the rest of what he does. The glass is raised — Vashe Zdorovie, Ivan Revnivykh!

As a consumer, what GNSS product, application, or engineering innovation would you most like to see?

Revnivykh said, “I would like to be able to buy a tablet with a real-time zooming world map showing exactly right now all details you need with cm-level accuracy of positioning reference. And it would have some history and predictive functions. Sure, this would not be just a GNSS technology, but would need synergy with satellite remote sensing and communication as well.”

The post Human Engineering: Ivan Revnivykh appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

“On the CS, we are dialoging extensively with EU member states, because there is a more and more consolidated view that there could be an advantage to providing the service for free,” des Dorides said.

At the lavish European Satellite Navigation Competition Awards Ceremony, we caught up with Carlo des Dorides, general director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA), who updated us on the status of the much-anticipated Galileo Commercial Service (CS).

“On the CS, we are dialoging extensively with EU member states, because there is a more and more consolidated view that there could be an advantage to providing the service for free,” des Dorides said.

For those who don’t know, the CS, from its conception and now for many years, has always been described and planned for as a fee-based, revenue-generating service. Indeed, the revenues to be generated by the CS have been described as offsetting to a measurable degree to the overall investment in the Galileo system.

Explaining the reasons for the shift, des Dorides said, “First and easiest, we believe that the induced value of providing the service for free will be far higher than if we provide it on a paying basis. If we go back to studies that were performed about two years ago, and then we continue to look over the past two years, the estimated revenues coming from the use of the Commercial Service have been looking more and more ‘thin’.”

Des Dorides said the GSA and the Commission see location and navigation technologies going in the direction of multi-system, multi-GNSS, which by itself will continue to provide better and better accuracy, ultimately limiting the draw of a fee-based high-accuracy system.

“So, the expected revenues are shrinking,” he said, “while on the other hand there is still the idea that Galileo can be the first mover to provide a high-accuracy service, but as a free service.”

“By high accuracy we mean around 20 centimeters,” des Dorides said, “not the 10 centimeters that you can find offered by various manufacturers in the market — these are different. We are talking about 20 centimeters with a convergence time on the order of five minutes, and you know that that 10 centimeter accuracy I mentioned comes with a 15-minute convergence time, so it’s a different market.”

Thus, he said, an accuracy on the order of 20 centimeters, delivered for free, could represent a competitive advantage for Galileo vis-a-vis the other GNSS systems.

“From the formal point of view,” he added, “there is a regulation [EU Regulation governing Galileo and CS] that clearly states that this is to be a commercial service, so we need to be sure that there is a political consensus among all member states,” because the regulation will have to be modified.

And therein lies the matter. The EU member states, soon to number 27 without the UK, need to go along with this fundamentally new direction for the CS, and we all know by now just how time- and energy-consuming EU wrangling of this sort can be. But des Dorides says he is optimistic: “It is difficult to tell you when this debate will end,” he said, “but I don’t expect it to go for 12 months. I expect in the next two to three months a decision will be made.”

EU Credibility in the Balance?
We also spoke to Philippe Jean, European Commission head of unit for Galileo legal and institutional aspects. He told essentially the same story, with some additional details, from the point of view of the Commission.

“There is a discussion that is taking place for the moment between the Commission and EU member states in order to fix the question of is the Commercial Service going to be free or is it going to be delivered for a fee,” Jean said.

“Since the beginning of the year, we at the Commission have been changing our minds and we think that now we have to go more in the direction of a free service, and we want to convince our member states to change their minds too. It’s an internal discussion, it’s an institutional discussion. But we expect to take a decision quite quickly, in order not to postpone the procurement situation.”

Jean said signs show Galileo’s competitors, in Japan for sure and perhaps in China, are likely to launch their own high-accuracy, CS-like services in the near future, and for free. So not only is it in Galileo’s interest to offer a free service, but also to do it quickly, to be the first to put such a service on the market. “What exactly is the asset if we are not doing it first?” Jean asked rhetorically.

He also cited the estimates mentioned by des Dorides, showing a negligible revenue stream for a fee-based service. “The income would be something like one percent of the actual Galileo budget, and for that we would lose the advantage of being the first to offer a free commercial service?”

That’s not to say that there aren’t voices opposing the move. There has already been significant investment laid out on building a CS based on incoming revenues, particularly among private companies.”I do understand the concerns of member states,” Jean said, “because they have been building a system with companies, and all of a sudden we are changing our minds, after so many years. Perhaps we will need to do some arbitration in order to manage the expectations of the companies that have been working on the system in the last two-three years.”

The pressure is real, Jean said; “What we are discussing is a key parameter, and when you go around, to events like this one in Tallinn, you can see it, you can feel it. There is a high level of expectation that the CS should provide a quality of service that is not offered by the Open Service (OS). So, it’s a problem of credibility. And the fact that there is an Open Service creates the expectation that the Commercial Service is going to come very quickly afterwards.”

“You have been following what we do for a long period of time, so you can guess that we now need to take a decision very quickly.” And yet, he said, the details of what the final product will look like are still not clear. “It’s not going to be with a fee for everything, but it will not be free for everything either, but something in between. I’m not expert in that, but we have understood there is a possibility to make a distinction between what is free and what is fee-based.”

Once the fee-free question and some further details about how authentication will work are sorted out, Jean said, it should be possible to launch a procurement process for the end of 2018. “Right now, no one can say when the system will become available. Of course everybody prefers 2018, but we need to wait and see how this current discussion goes.”

Both Jean and des Dorides described a relatively straightforward process, assuming minimal delay, but we would not be surprised to see that process being drawn out due to various circumstances. If it goes on for too long, the Commission could find itself being beaten to the punch by a Japanese or Chinese CS, and then its credibility will rightly be questioned.

Galileo Perspective
Back with des Dorides, we went over some recent and forthcoming milestones in the ongoing saga that is Galileo.

Standout moments in the past few months have included the announcement last September by Apple that the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X will be Galileo-compatible. “With that, Apple became the last of the big smartphone manufacturers to integrate Galileo,” des Dorides said. “We now have Huawei, Sony, Samsung and Apple, which was our goal from the beginning.”

The Apple announcement was followed quickly by Broadcom’s unveiling of the first mass-market, dual-frequency chip. “And this means we could see a dual-frequency smartphone as soon as next spring,” des Dorides said. “This also allows Galileo to be used at full potential, improving accuracy but also helping in complex environments, in cities, against multi-path effects.”

Here he mentioned the remarkable fact that Galileo is now operating more dual-frequency satellites than GPS. “I believe GPS has 11, if I’m not wrong. So we are truly on the technology edge,” he said.

Another fundamental milestone for Galileo was the successful transition last July from operations on a best-effort basis to the live exploitation phase, handing the GSA full responsibility for operational service provision.

Looking forward, the program will see its next launch on December 12, with four satellites to be lifted into orbit by the awe-inspiring Ariane 5 launcher.

“Then, in a couple of months, we will be awarding a new contract for the ground control segment, another tangible sign that Galileo is moving forward on pace,” des Dorides said. “And finally, in the last quarter of 2018, really the most important milestone for next year, we will announce the new enhanced service.”

This is essentially the next release of Galileo, he said, coming two years after initial services. It will include the OS authentication, and a new release for the ground segment, for the Galileo Security Monitoring Center (GSMC), entailing the distribution of keys for the PRS. There will also be a new SAR feature, the so-called “return link”, which will inform people calling for emergency aid that their call has been received.

A Rather Political Business Roundtable
Among the diverse highlights of EU Space Week in Tallinn was the Satellite Masters Conference, which kicked off with a “business roundtable” featuring some business people and a number of EU institutional representatives.

The word “integration” was repeated a number of times in the first minutes and throughout the session, as were other familiar words and phrases such as “diversity” and “freedom of movement” — words that have lately become more closely associated with political and social discourse in our part of the world.

After several repetitions of these words and phrases by a sequence of speakers, one began to get the impression that these popular buzzwords from the socio-political sphere were being systematically superimposed on the discussion, a discussion purportedly concerned with business.

To be sure, the meaning of these words was slightly shifted to fit the context; here, for example, the words “diversity” and “integration” tended more to refer to bringing in new companies with diverse visions, and integrating different groups in support of innovation, etc. “Freedom of movement” referred more to goods, services and specialized personnel than to just regular people.

And then one remembered that, after all, EU space policy in general, like the Galileo program in particular, are owned by a public body. Indeed we were reminded explicitly by GSA Head of Market Development Gian-Gherardo Calini, who, when asked to talk about the particular strengths of the Galileo program, replied virtually instantaneously, as if without needing to think, “It’s civil.” Galileo, unlike the United States’ GPS, is a civil program, owned and run by the European Commission, not a private one, and especially not a military one.

The language of the EU’s prevailing political and social agenda is written all over the EU space strategy, and it fills the mouths of its representatives. We only wish to point out that not serving a military master does not mean not serving a master. It only means serving a different master.

More Impertinence Inspired by the Roundtable
The program of the Satellite Masters Conference, put together we assume by conference organizers AZO, included a brief introduction, which read, in part, “Despite current tendencies that are threatening to pull Europe apart…” (followed by something about the benefits of staying together).

This somewhat cryptic reference to forces working to destroy Europe was echoed by broadcast journalist and roundtable moderator Louise Houghton, who, in her very brief opening remarks, invited all to consider the significance of 2017 for the European Union, “…at a time when many of the fundamental principles are being challenged”.

In neither case were the sources of imminent menace elaborated upon, and we won’t speculate here as to what they might be. But it might be a good idea for someone to look into this.

Less Political, Still Eyebrow-Raising
Dinka Dinkova, European Commission deputy head of unit for space data for societal challenges and growth, told the audience at the business roundtable, “Europe is the best place in the world to start a business.”

That’s a claim that might have been disputed by Rainer Sternfeld, founder of Planet OS, had he chosen to speak up at that moment. Instead, he waited until he was asked a separate question, to which he answered, “Europe is a big market and very quality-oriented, but it’s not always the best for young companies.”

Sternfeld is, by the way, a European, who went off to America to start an extremely successful high-tech company. We spoke to him after the roundtable and asked him to elaborate. “If you want to be a good chef you have to go to France,” he said. “There’s this place Silicon Valley and you just have to go there. We went there because of the market and the investors and the understanding of how to build these kinds of new-value businesses. And I wanted to push myself, you know, to the edge.”

Sternfeld volunteered more, saying, “If you really want to look critically at Europe, then, depending on your business, sometimes it’s like, OK you have 500 million people in Europe but it’s so distributed across these different countries and it’s not easy to trade because every country will very often have its own rules, even if you have free trade and now the European Union has a single market. In the U.S. you have one big market, so just knock yourself out.

“One example,” he continued, “you can ship wine very easily from one country to another all over Europe, but with digital it’s a little different. Say if you want to buy a song on iTunes, then in the U.S. I can be wherever I want, but Europe has put a system in place that basically forbids the free movement of such services. That’s a simple example, and in satellite data or data in general there are similar things.”

So, Europe still has a way to go when it comes to removing these types of borders.

Nägemist Tallinn
We leave Estonia with a positive message from des Dorides: “We are coming very soon now to the start of the debate on the space budget. It will not be an easy debate, first of all because of Brexit. But I feel that space has a favorable future. I sense the EU does believe in space and the forthcoming budget will be consistent with this.”

Galileo is delivering the expected results, he said. The program’s mid-term review was positive, and the other EU space initiatives are also viewed favorably. The days of the doubters seem well and truly gone.

The ESA budget, des Dorides pointed out, has remained relatively stable in recent years, while the EU has grown its space budget significantly. “We are in a position to be positive about space in Europe,” he concluded. And, all things considered, yes, so are we, until next time.

The post Fundamental Rethink for Galileo Commercial Service appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Last year a problem with the GPS satellite timing signal triggered alarms and caused an unknown number of outages, and in Europe earlier this year the fledgling Galileo signal crashed due to unspecified ground facility issues.

A government report commissioned by Innovate UK, along with the UK Space Agency and the Royal Institute of Navigation, entitled “Economic impact to the UK of a disruption to GNSS”, comes in the wake of troubling incidents for GNSS operators, both the United States and Europe.

Last year a problem with the GPS satellite timing signal triggered alarms and caused an unknown number of outages, and in Europe earlier this year the fledgling Galileo signal crashed due to unspecified ground facility issues.

“We wanted to know the economics behind a loss of GNSS, and if there are innovations in the GNSS market we should be investing in, perhaps addressing GNSS vulnerability or new technology integration,” said Andy Proctor. “Understanding the economics of a GNSS worst-case situation has not been done in the UK before.”

Proctor, who chairs the UK Government PNT Group, commissioned the UK GNSS vulnerability report for Innovate UK, an executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.

“Innovate UK is a Government Agency,” Proctor said, “a non-departmental body, which means we work in a cross-government way, talking to all departments regularly. We invest, mostly via grants, into UK businesses to stimulate economic growth, unlock R&D and market barriers and address market failures.”

Of crucial concern to Proctor and Innovate UK is the fact that while GNSS is a widespread technology, the full extent and nature of its use, as well as the resilience of its users to disruption, has not yet been understood.

The lead researcher and writer of the report is Greg Sadlier, Divisional Director, Space, at London Economics.

“We do lots of GNSS work,” Sadlier said. “We actually lead a consortium that does research for the European GNSS Agency (GSA) market analysis report. So, we do a lot behind the scenes in Europe space and also in the UK space policy environment.

“Given the substantial use of GNSS in the UK, the question was do we need to worry about resilience and, if so, to what extent.”

What is Vulnerability?
Although the report is not strictly concerned with defining the possible causes of a major GNSS outage, who or what the possible culprits might be is pretty clear.

For example, there is space weather; when the solar winds are acting up, satellite signals propagating through the Earth’s atmosphere can be profoundly affected. Indeed, the solar weather scenario was the basis for the chosen duration of the envisaged GNSS crash described in the report.

“For the study,” Proctor explained, “I decided upon a five-day duration, as it links in with scenarios in the national risk register, the space weather impact reports such as that from the Royal Academy of Engineering, and also the UK Government Space Weather Preparedness Strategy.”

But, he said, the GNSS signal could also be deliberately attacked. Terrorists can buy or build a jammer that is powerful enough to affect large areas of a major city from a publicly accessible location. Indeed, with a simple multi-frequency jammer, now easily available, any person can knock out all L1 to L5 bands, meaning GPS, Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), Galileo, EGNOS, and the rest. Finally, satellite components and/or ground-based systems can fail.

“It should be noted,” Sadlier said, “that the overall impact of an outage of GNSS is not necessarily independent of the source of the disruption: e.g., a severe natural space weather event causing a loss of GNSS may also cause an outage of other (satellite) services, including communications, broadcasting, meteorological, earth observation, as well as power supply.”

Stark Terms
The report finds that the UK could lose £1 billion per day (about $1.263 billion) if GNSS were to go down. And such a crash would cause more than just financial losses, as everyday essential activities would also be affected, including emergency care and mass transportation. A lack of GNSS would hit navigation hard, but would also affect multiple industries that need it for mapping, tracking and timing.

The report explains how GNSS is used, what part it plays in a variety of systems, as well as how resilient those systems are in the case of GNSS disruption across 10 application domains: road, rail, aviation, maritime, food, emergency and justice services, surveying, locationbased services (LBS), other infrastructure, and other applications.

What was probably already clear to some and what will be alarming to many others is the finding that all critical national infrastructures in the UK rely on GNSS to some extent, with communications, emergency services, finance, and transport identified as particularly intensive users.

This vast reliance on GNSS has developed over decades, based on widespread assumptions about availability and continuity. GNSS is also a primary input for transport, including road, air, maritime, and rail transport, as it is in agriculture, surveying, and for the legal professions.

The UK space industry derived an estimated turnover of £1.7 billion (about $2.15 billion) from PNT services in 2014- 15, supporting 4,000 jobs, while sectors generating a total of £206 billion (about $260 billion) in gross value added (11.3% of UK GDP) are supported directly by GNSS. But the crucial role played by GNSS in national infrastructures means that an even wider range of economic activities is underpinned by GNSS indirectly. Proctor also noted that there were many areas where the impact of a GNSS disruption was difficult to monetize, so that the final estimates arrived at in the report are likely to be low.

“We always expected the transport sector to be heavily impacted,” Proctor said, “but most surprising to me was the level of reliance of the maritime sector. I just didn’t think it would be so great, and this is something that sector in particular should take a look at and consider.”

Indeed, in the maritime navigation sector, GNSS is now widely treated as the sole necessary navigation solution. Virtually all traditional and even more recent back-up systems have simply disappeared, such that all other means of navigation have been replaced by GNSS.

The “Vulnerability Community”
The report will certainly be welcomed by the so-called “vulnerability community”, a loosely connected band of determined individuals that includes the likes of Dana Goward of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, who has been trying to ram home the GNSS vulnerability message for years.

The “Vulnies” also include eminent personalities such as Professor David Last, Past-President of the Royal Institute of Navigation, and even the venerable Brad Parkinson, “Father of GPS”. All of these and other figures have appeared at industry and policy events with messages not so much of doom and gloom, but of beware and prepare.

They believe it is perfectly right to point out the potential vulnerabilities of satellite-based navigation, so that the widening array of critical GNSS-supported operations can be appropriately safeguarded.

EU Heeds the Call
So far, no government seems to have moved very far towards answering the call for a GNSS back-up system. The European Union (EU) is no exception. Indeed, until very recently, anyone trying to get a serious answer from the European Commission (EC) on the question of GNSS vulnerability might have assumed the Commission hadn’t given the issue much thought at all.

The EU’s avoidance of questions about GNSS vulnerability is probably understandable, if nothing else on a human level. After more than 20 years of bleeding, sweating and crying tears on the road to an operational Galileo system, the last thing those folks will want to hear is “‘Oh, by the way, Galileo is not resilient enough so we need to look for something else”.

Attention is sometimes diverted by talk of the Galileo Public Regulated Service, the vaunted, military-like PRS. But it is generally expected that only a small proportion of Galileo users will have access to the PRS, and while it may be more robust, it will certainly not be immune to a wide-scale GNSS outage, either natural or man-made.

But the EU’s reluctance to look GNSS vulnerability square in the face may be changing. Inside GNSS recently reported, as per unnamed sources, that the Commission is funding a study in support of a European radionavigation plan, and that the study discusses the need for resilient PNT and looks at using terrestrial systems as well as space-based signals. This again will be music to the ears of the vulnerability squad.

Meanwhile, the European Space Agency (ESA), it appears, is also taking a broader perspective in its new navigation endeavors, describing a PNT effort, not a GNSS one, with a strong emphasis on hybrid systems.

In a recent conversation, one highly placed source within ESA said the Agency is “very conscious” of the vulnerabilities of GNSS, including Galileo. “The more these systems are used the more vulnerable they are,” our source told us. “I think we are still at an early stage in terms of market penetration. The number of users is still very low compared to what it will be in the future. There is a growing awareness, and we are at the correct stage to start implementing solutions to address vulnerability.”

Proctor said he too senses an increasing understanding of the vulnerabilities of GNSS across the EU. “There is still a lot of awareness to raise I believe, as GNSS has become proliferate and often embedded in systems sometimes without risk managers being aware.”

Back-up Options
Sadlier referred us to a full range of possible back-up systems considered in the report, from clocks and sextants to determine position at sea, or the use of old paper maps on the road, to more modern technologies such as radar systems.

“The aviation sector can make use of a number of existing back-up systems,” he said, “but there is currently no ‘universally applicable’ alternative to GNSS for the case of positioning and navigation, and many of the traditional means of navigation might not be readily available or useable, depending on the individual application.” True enough, my sextant went missing years ago.

For timing applications, Sadlier said, loss of GNSS can be mitigated by using adequate oscillators in the GNSS timing receiver that can hold time for a certain holdover period, ranging from a few minutes to many months. However, higher quality equipment with longer holdover periods is more expensive. Hence, loss of the GNSS signal will still affect sectors relying on its timing capabilities.

Of Course, eLoran
It seems any talk of GNSS vulnerability inevitably leads to the topic of eLoran. The two seem permanently linked. So much so that some have wondered whether the vulnerability “scare” isn’t just a pretense for the “eLoran folks” to get their pet technology funded.

On the other hand, it is just as possible that eLoran is constantly being put forward because it is in fact the best single back-up option. As reports of movement towards establishing eLoran as a potential back-up system continue to circulate in the United States, a glance in Europe’s direction also reveals a number of old Loran C navigation sites that could support an eLoran service as a back-up for GPS and Galileo.

Proctor said he was careful not to try to tip the scales when commissioning the report. “Yes, it’s true, a lot of people seem to have been talking about eLoran lately. But when we commissioned the report we didn’t lead Greg [Sadlier] in any way in terms of which potential back-up systems should be favored. As I have consistently said, I do not see eLoran as a cure-all for every case.”

And STL?
Another technology currently making waves is called Satellite Time and Location (STL). The Satelles company is using existing low-earth-orbit Iridium satellites, normally used for communications, to deliver a powerful signal for accurate and resilient positioning, navigation and timing that works anywhere, including indoors.

The STL signal is about 1000 times more powerful than GNSS signals, and it has some built-in cryptography elements, making STL easier to “hear” in difficult locations and harder to jam or spoof, compared to GNSS.

However, as with all other options, STL has its limitations. As Satelles’ Senior Radio Frequency Hardware Systems Engineer Stewart Cobb explained to us last December in Noordwijk, “STL works a lot like the old transit system where you watch a satellite go overhead and you take a series of fixes and between them you figure out your position. With GPS you need four satellites to get a fix, but generally you can see 10 or 12 so you can get a fix almost instantaneously. Basically, with STL it’s going to take longer to get a precise fix.”

Looking at the array of solutions examined in the report, Sadlier said, “The most applicable mitigation strategies for the largest number of applications are eLoran and STL. These high-availability services could mitigate many of the detriments in the maritime sector, and while the accuracy is insufficient for container stacking and autonomous cranes, the ability to schedule port operations and reduce downtime would help keep ports open.”

The cost of resurrecting eLoran to a usable level, he said, would be on the order of £50m over 15 years (or about $65.1 million). The cost of STL is still unclear at this early stage in its development.

Proctor also suggested the best solution is likely to involve a combination of technologies. “The combination of eLoran and STL likely would give the broadest coverage in the event of an extended GNSS outage,” he said.

The report identified Omnisense SP500 and Locata as possible preferred solutions for localized applications that require high levels of accuracy.

“Timing applications have been found to be resilient to a five-day outage of GNSS,” Sadlier said, “but one could implement eLoran, STL, Locata or freely-available Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers as a source of timing for low accuracy applications. If higher accuracy is required, Precision Time Protocols (PTP) or time-over fiber networks, like NPL Time, are two alternatives.”

Obstacles of the Political Kind
Proctor said there are three key target audiences for the report. First is the GNSS community itself. “This is a real evidence-based report,” he said. “As such it is a resource for the industry in question. There is new factual information here, real figures about the real world.”

Second, he said, is the infrastructure operators, the users. “It’s for all of those people and organizations whose equipment needs GNSS to function. This applies all the way down in the supply chain to the general public, people who are already dependent on GNSS and may not even know it.”

Finally, there are the policy makers, who need to understand and who may be in a position to say yes or no to funding initiatives.

“Personally, I believe there can always be more awareness of the benefits of GNSS and also the vulnerabilities associated with using it,” Proctor said. “Perhaps the blockages are where GNSS has become cheap to procure and implement, so assessing the costs of using an additional technology to back it up, when it rarely fails, is a difficult sell.”

The UK GNSS Vulnerability report is one of two PNT-focused studies recently commissioned in the UK, the other being a high-level Blackett Review, both of which will provide a well-rounded picture of the PNT-related economic and technical challenges faced by the UK, including critical infrastructure dependencies.

The post Answering the Call for a GNSS Back-up appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

No longer consigned to predicting what might one day happen, the folks at the Galileo program can now look at and talk about what is happening right now, starting with initial services. To help us understand what’s going on, we enlisted no less than Matthias Petschke, Galileo Program Director at the European Commission (EC).

“Since the initial service declaration that took place on 15 December 2016,” Petschke told us, “the European Commission and the GSA [European GNSS Agency] have put together an extensive service provision, monitoring and reporting process.” 

Beyond the real-time operations of the system, he explained, the performance of Galileo services is being assessed a posteriori on a monthly basis.

“The data collected so far indicate an excellent level of performance,” Petschke said, “well within the performance levels published in the Galileo OS Service Definition Document. In fact, recent independent tests have confirmed that Galileo plus GPS already offers increased accuracy in urban areas over GPS alone.”

It would be hard to overstate the significance of what Petschke is reporting here. A system that for so long was considered by some to be on the verge of becoming the poster child for all that is wrong with the EU – among other things long, convoluted and often contentious decision-making processes – Galileo is finally, and in a very real and measurable way, a success story. The system currently counts 18 satellites in orbit, in various functional states, out of 30 planned.

Except…
We need to point out here that Petschke relayed his remarks to us some days before the first wide scale failure of Galileo services, an event that began on May 14, 2017. When Petschke made his remarks, they were still accurate and pertinent.

More on the service failure later. For now, let’s continue with the good news.

Petschke said the program plans to make public its performance reports on a quarterly basis through the European GNSS Service Center (GSC) website. The first report of this type, covering the first quarter of 2017, is expected in May.

“In parallel,” he said, “the GSA is setting up a fully independent performance monitoring capability, which will be hosted at the Galileo Reference Center (GRC) in the Netherlands. This independent performance monitoring will also include worldwide monitoring capabilities from various EU Member States and should be available as of July 2017.”

Before the failure of May 14, we knew that there had already been some less serious glitches affecting the initial service, but such was to be expected given the level of immaturity of the system, and we were not prepared to dwell on these. One of our sources in Brussels who prefers to remain anonymous did tell us at the time, “The initial services are an important milestone, and are injecting some sense of responsibility into the program.” Yes, the people who for so long were occupied with telling us why it wasn’t ready, are now at last proud owners of a functioning multi-billion-euro space system, and they’re getting a feel for how it handles.

In the Driver’s Seat
Actual hands-on operation of Galileo now falls to the newly designated Galileo Service Operator (GSOp). Working under a 10-year, 1.5-billion-euro contract (about $1.65 billion), Spaceopal is a joint venture between Italy’s Telespazio and the German Space Agency (DLR). After a long and complex tendering process that started in January 2015, Spaceopal and the GSA officially signed the GSOp contract last December, on the very day when initial services were launched.

Under GSA management, Spaceopal is charged with securing Galileo operations from two mission control centers (GCCs), one located in Germany and the other in Italy, and it is to provide user sup-port services through the European GNSS Service Centre (GSC) in Spain.

Spaceopal will manage the Galileo Data Distribution Network (GDDN) and provide integrated logistics support and maintenance for the entire space and ground infrastructure. Finally, the group will monitor system performance and otherwise support to the best of its ability the ongoing roll-out of Galileo infrastructure and associated launches.

Petschke told Inside GNSS, “The handover of operations from the current contractual set-up to the Galileo Service Operator is being conducted according to plan, following a series of milestones to verify readiness in a number of areas. The GSA has already put in place its own internal organization to fully oversee service delivery as of July 2017.”

To that end, the GSOp contract includes a set of clear and tangible key performance indicators (KPIs), against which the GSA will assess the work of the Spaceopal. 

In reality, there has been little anxiety to be felt over Spaceopal’s ability to do the job, the group having already served as the contractor for Galileo operations since 2010 under the Galileo Full Operational Capability (FOC) Operations Framework Contract. At the new GSOp contract signing ceremony in Prague, Spaceopal CEO Giuseppe Lenzo gave every impression of being up to the task, assuring the gathered happy dignitaries that his group is committed to continuing to support the deployment and completion of the Galileo system.

PRS Included
Of the various services promised over the years by the Galileo program, the Public Regulated Service (PRS) always seemed the least likely to get off the ground without a hitch, among the doubters, that is.

And yet, speaking at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit earlier this year, Christoph Kautz, European Commission Galileo and EGNOS Deputy Head of Unit, was able to remind participants that the PRS was indeed among the Galileo initial services declared last December.

The PRS comprises a dedicated, authenticated and encrypted service for governmental authorized users in areas such as public safety and security, critical infrastructure, and defense.

Speaking at the same event in Munich, GSA PRS Manager Charles Villie described the PRS as an encrypted navigation service designed to be more resistant to jamming, involuntary interference and spoofing, “…offering continuity of service, including higher availability of the signal in space and providing an independent authenticated position, velocity and timing service.”

The main task now is to make the transition to exploitation, Kautz said. And the EC, he added, is looking forward to full deployment of the Galileo constellation by 2020, working in concert with the relevant ground system elements, including the Galileo Security Monitoring Center (GSMC) near Paris and the Competent PRS authorities (CPAs) that need to be established in Member States in order to access and control the use of the PRS within their borders.

Kautz made no mention of the putative back-up GSMC supposed to have been located in the UK, the country whose status within the program has been thrown up in the air in the wake of its decision to leave the European Union. But then no one within the Galileo program, not even Kautz, is volunteering any substantive thinking of any kind on that most embarrassing of issues. The one and only official response to all questions Brexit is “we don’t know yet”.

Kautz went on to argue that, following the publication of the EU’s Space Strategy in 2016, it is likely that the range of security-related space applications will increase in the future, and there could therefore [hopefully] be an increased demand for the more secure and robust PRS service.

Meanwhile, a majority of the EU European Member States have now established their CPAs, and a number of non-EU countries have expressed interest in using the service. Negotiations on that last score are being held tightly under wraps.

Villie insisted: “Today all PRS functionalities are available. The whole infrastructure is functional and operational and authorized users can test their procedures for real and can check PRS functionalities themselves.”

PRS receiver concepts have already been developed and validated under a battery of pilot projects funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program.

As for user acceptance, Villie said, that is going to depend plainly and simply on whether or not the PRS can prove its worth. A range of testing and demonstration activities is being carried out through 2017.

So, these are still very early days for the PRS, but some users appear to be sold already. Speaking on behalf of the German CPA, Lukas Schmid of the German Transport Ministry said he saw many potential applications for the PRS within the police and security services. As an example, he said, server-based Galileo PRS solutions for authenticated positioning and timing that are available today could significantly simplify the tracking of tagged terrorist suspects.

He also described the “Hali Berlin” project under which traffic lights were synchronized for emergency vehicles, with the PRS helping to secure the application. The procedure greatly reduced the time it took for emergency vehicles to get to incidents while also reducing the number of accidents involving those vehicles. Schmid said further joint test activities between Germany, Belgium and other Member States are slated. Also, proclaiming the potential benefits of the PRS was Colonel Philippe Bertrand, head of the French CPA, which is now also part of an organization that will ensure the interoperability of Galileo PRS with military GPS for the French Ministry of Defense.

During 2016, the French CPA along with the French MoD and the French Space Agency (CNES) undertook in-depth PRS validation activities, including monitoring and security tests. Bertrand told participants at the Munich event, “It is very clear that the PRS’ navigation performance is really very good and very interesting.”

Much like Villie though, Bertrand said he thought that large numbers of users will only come if the PRS lives up to its pledges, e.g., gaining full operational capability by 2020 and providing the promised very high level of security.

For his part, Petschke is confident the PRS will come through: “The PRS is already in its initial service phase and the Galileo program is committed to achieving the objective of full operational capability by the end of 2020.”

On the Other Hand
Petschke said that while the PRS is definitely alive and kicking, the equally-anticipated Galileo Commercial Service (CS) is still a ways off: “The first signal transmissions for the Commercial Service should take place late in 2018.”

The CS has seen its ups and downs and it was glaringly though not unexpectedly absent from the package of initial services launched in December. The service has been described as encrypted and accurate to the nearest centimeter, allowing for the development of applications for professional or commercial use owing to improved performance and data with greater added value than that obtained through the open service.

We have it on good authority that an invitation to tender for the pre-selection phase of the CS service provider is likely to be issued by the end of this year. So, the CS is still a going concern, but users will have to wait a while longer to get a feel for what it can do.

Still No Getting Away From….
Clearly a major source of disappointment, both inside and outside the program, continues to be the affair of the failed Galileo satellite onboard clocks. But not to harp on the issue, as we do believe there is reasonable potential benefit to be gained by bringing to light certain observations.

Readers will remember the failure of a number of Galileo onboard clocks, as revealed by European Space Agency Director General Johan-Dietrich Woerner last January. At that time, he said, nine of the 72 orbiting clocks had failed – three rubidium clocks and six passive hydrogen maser [PHM] clocks. One additional PHM clock had failed, but had been successfully restarted.

And, Woerner told reporters, the decision to use the Italian-produced clocks was part of a larger European “political” strategy. “This discussion of Galileo as a whole was a strategic decision,” he said. “We wanted to have an autonomous European solution for satellite navigation and so to have these systems based on European technology was a clear political decision.”

He and others have made clear since then that the clock failures, while indeed troubling, have had no effect on the operational integrity of the Galileo system.

Most recently, Petschke told us, “The ESA-led investigation has significantly progressed and should be able to confirm a resolution plan that contains the risks in the weeks to come.”

The fact that a resolution plan is still in progress, four months after the problem was revealed, is neither disquieting nor reassuring. If the plan does not surface within the cited weeks, that will be disquieting.

“This plan would include both a refurbishment program for the next satellites to be launched and operational procedures for the satellites in orbit. The next launch is planned to take place in December this year,” Petschke said.

One anonymous source in Brussels told us, “The clock problem is being resolved. The rubidium clocks will all need retrofitting, but this will have little or no impact on the launch schedule.

Galileo Goes Off
Having been fair in giving the Galileo program the credit it is due, and we do believe it is due much credit, we feel equally minded to record its failures. The following Notice Advisory for Galileo Users (NAGU) was issued on 15 May 2017, announcing such a failure beginning on 14 May.

“EVENT DESCRIPTION: NAVIGATION MESSAGES NOT REFRESHED FOR ALL SATELLITES SINCE 2017-05-14 15:50 UTC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.”

During the event, one individual who is close to the program spoke of disappointment over a complete failure after just five months of initial services.

Another inside source told us the failure involved one part of the Galileo ground segment, nothing to do with the onboard clocks.

While the failure notice was still in effect, an ESA spokesperson confirmed to us, “A hardware equipment malfunction in the ground segment affected the functioning of the Galileo system. As a result the navigation message for all satellites has not been refreshed since 15:50 on 14/05/2017. The cause of the malfunction has been identified, the equipment concerned has been replaced and the recovery of the services to their nominal levels has started.”

On May 17, three days after the beginning of the event, the follow-up NAGU appeared:

“EVENT DESCRIPTION: CONDITIONS LEADING TO NAVIGATION MESSAGES NOT TIMELY REFRESHED FOR ALL SATELLITES HAVE CONCLUDED.”

During the length of the event, there was no tentative recovery date given. Some very hard questions are now being asked, both within and without the Galileo program. Here are just a few such questions that have been suggested to us:

1) Is the Galileo technical infrastructure mature enough to provide committed services?

2) Have the European Commission, the GSA and the ESA invested enough in the organizational aspects of Galileo, including logistics, and considered with due attention the meaning and implied responsibilities of service provision?

3) Is it clear to all of them what the difference is between developing a technology, procuring and integrating a system, operating a system and providing services continuously and reliably?

We will be watching and asking these questions of the responsible agencies as the Galileo program moves forward.

Also, we are asked to imagine where we would be if GPS were to suddenly announce a complete service failure, with no recovery date given. Various unpleasant epithets immediately come to mind. As far as we know, this has never happened to GPS, however some problems have occurred in GPS operations over the years, including the Jan. 26, 2016, software upload that adversely affected the GPS system time/UTC offset information in the navigation message and caused a lot of problems for users. See the article here.

We have also been reminded of certain outspoken claims regarding Galileo’s eventual superiority to GPS (and we know there are voices expressing at every opportunity a deep and abiding respect for the immeasurable hard work and dedication that has made GPS, GLONASS and BeiDou what they are today).

All are eager to see an improved and strengthened Galileo, but there is also a perceived need to shake up the establishment, to encourage heightened diligence and, in some cases, a little humility.

In the end, this latest event could serve the maturing Galileo program well. But that will depend on how the relevant parties respond, starting now.

The post Galileo in the Here and Now appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Speakers at the 9th Annual Conference on European Space Policy wasted no time in addressing the somewhat worrying failure of several Galileo onboard clocks, as revealed by European Space Agency Director General Johan-Dietrich Woerner at a press briefing earlier in January in Paris. He made clear at the time that the clock failures, while indeed troubling, had had no effect on the operational integrity of the Galileo system.

Certain sources, however, seemed to want to jump on the clock story as another confirmation of a misguided and failed approach of the entire Galileo program, if not the entire European Union. Reactions from some quarters involved crying out, “There they go again, another gaffe for Galileo!”, and then watching as the relevant officials squirmed.

Yes, curious as it may seem, there are some people who enjoy watching officials squirm.

But there was no squirming at the conference in Brussels. Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner (EC) for single market, industry, entrepreneurship and SMEs, confirmed Woerner’s assessment of the operational status of all Galileo satellites, and not before reminding the assembly of the successes of 2016, including the first-ever four-at-a-time launch last autumn, and the successful declaration of Galileo initial services in December.

“A number of clocks have failed,” Bienkowska said. “Every large-scale project, in particular technology-intensive ones, face high risks. Galileo is no exception. Such things can happen, as we also learned from the experience of other navigation satellite systems. This is why we have four clocks onboard each satellite, to cope precisely with clock failures. To work properly, a satellite needs only one clock. All the satellites in orbit to deliver initial services are operational.

“We are monitoring the situation very closely,” she said. “As always, on technical issues, the Europe Space Agency is leading an in-depth technical investigation of the clock failures and is already implementing corrective actions together with the industry.”

So, the common message coming out of ESA and the EC is, in short, “smooth sailing.” The policy of installing more clocks than needed seems to have paid off. Despite the failed clocks, which number about six, all of the orbiting Galileo satellites still have at least two functioning clocks.

Bienkowska said she has recommended the setting up of a joint steering group chaired by the EC, along with industrial partners and ESA, to look into the clock failures and then make clear policy and industrial recommendations.

These clear policy recommendations are pertinent, because, as we know, Galileo is not just a technology program but a policy-driven program. It was Woerner who said during his press briefing in Paris that the decision to install the now-failing, but more importantly ‘made-in-Europe’ rubidium clocks onboard Galileo was a political decision, not a technical one, linked to the central EU policy goal of maintaining European autonomy in space.

Woerner also granted that while no orbiting satellite has been rendered inoperable due to a clock failure, impending launches could be delayed as the investigation plays itself out.

Later, Bienkowska proclaimed the important role of space, including Galileo, in European security and defense. She concluded by encouraging, among other things, “…faith in the added value of Europe…” and she called space, “…one of these – maybe the only one of these – concrete and positive examples of what we can do together in Europe.”

Godspeed, Antonio Tajani
The really bad news at the conference was the announcement that scheduled opening speaker and longtime Galileo advocate Antonio Tajani would not be appearing, due to responsibilities under his “new mandate.”

We remind readers that Tajani, the former vice-president of the European Commission, was recently voted into the Presidency of the European Parliament. Commentators expressed pleasure in knowing that our old friend is traveling in ever higher circles, and everyone in the European space community will now be expecting to feel his support from that new and even more influential position.

So, it was Tajani’s replacement speaker, European Member of Parliament Jerzy Buzek, who set the tone for the conference. He called in his opening address for a more concerted effort towards bringing space-based data and services to the people, for the benefit of society, but especially for the European economy.

Buzek mentioned increasing competition from a dynamic United States, and he spoke of the need to inspire the next generation of Europeans, a theme that has been repeated over and over for years.

The audience was then treated to a stimulating address by another highly placed personality, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission Frederica Mogherini, who said, about European space activities, “There is a clear link with our security and defense.”

Mogherini thanked Bienkowska, “…for the wonderful work we’ve done together with really a team spirit, that sometimes is new in our institutions…”

The EC’s new Global Strategy for Foreign and Security Policy, unveiled last summer, Mogherini said, is meant to encompass all the fields and all the tools of relevance to the EU’s external action, including space.

“We stress the need for cooperation,” she said, “and to develop some kind of common governance of space activities. We all understand that space is essential to our security and to our economy, so we have a strong and clear interest to promote the autonomy and security of our space-based services.”

This, by the way, is the same Frederica Mogherini who, just a few days later, would have very strong words for the incoming American administration in response to the announcement of new restrictions for people wanting to enter the United States.

“Human exploration of outer space began as a space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” she said. “Today the Cold War is over, and I believe it is over forever. I not only believe it, but I hope it.”

Looking at the larger picture, she discussed preventing a new arms race and moving towards better global governance: “We often refer in the European Union to the fact that we invest in a rules-based global order. We don’t have so many actors that are investing in a truly rule-based global order, so we have a special responsibility as Europeans to play a role, to link up with the others that share our same agenda and to try and bring this agenda forward.”

She added, “We are engaging with our tools, our diplomacy, our political weight – because indeed we have some – and our capabilities. Europe’s strategy of autonomy includes Galileo.

“Strategic autonomy benefits not only our citizens and states, but also our partners, because the development of a full spectrum of security capabilities will make us a stronger partner for our friends around the world that are demanding more and more from the European Union to be a security provider around the world, including our American friends. So, we can set our partnerships globally on a more equal footing, sharing more equally the costs and the responsibilities of our common security.”

“Europe,” Mogherini concluded, “can and should be a space power, but it can only do so as a true union.”

This all developed against the backdrop of what some have called an existential crisis for the EU itself. And that existential crisis has a name…

Brexit
The breaks in between conference sessions featured much chatter about recent events. This being the new year and all, when people like to take a deep breath, look back and look forward. Brexit and the election of a new American president were on people’s tongues, with tones varying from amused to frustrated to nearly passionate. Everyone’s got a right to their opinion.

And the topic of Brexit also spilled onto the podium, with several speakers specifically alluding to “what’s happened,” not without the urging of at least one mischievous session moderator.

European Member of Parliament from Britain Clare Moody got the ball rolling, explaining to the conference why she thought Britain should have stayed in the EU: “We are united in diversity. It is by working together that we can achieve success in our endeavors in space. It is as a British MEP that I particularly recognize and cherish our ability to combine our efforts.”

Moody reminded participants of what she had said at the same conference a year ago. “I said then that space policy was one of the very many good reasons that the UK should have stayed – should stay – in the EU. My view on that hasn’t changed, although you may have noticed that the politics have gotten a little bit more tricky back in the UK.”

Moody continued on the theme of world politics: “Space is where we work with countries that we sometimes find more difficult to work with here on Earth.” She was also happy to note that ESA had endorsed the new EU Space Strategy and that the EC sees ESA as, “…a valuable, full and equal partner in developing space programs.”

This is an important point indeed for Great Britain, whose membership in ESA, if not in the EU, will ensure its continued presence in big-league European space projects such as Galileo.

During a question-and-answer session on space services integration, Jadwiga Emilewicz, Undersecretary of State for the Ministry of Economic Development of the still relatively young EU Member State Poland, was asked about the impact of Brexit on European space policy. “Thank you for the question which is not very directly connected with the topic of our discussion,” she responded, to the delight of some listeners, “although Brexit is interfering on almost every single discussion within the European Union.”

Brexit is important, Emilewicz said, but it will not interfere with the goals of Europe’s space policy. “I would say that if we want to achieve those ambitious goals, it could not be achieved without the active role of the United Kingdom.”

For his part, Woerner, during his press briefing in Paris a week earlier, had already addressed the question of Britain’s self-removal from the European Union. “ESA is an intergovernmental organization, so we are not part of the EU, so therefore there is no direct impact. The UK has clearly indicated that their membership in ESA is not in question. It’s more or less the opposite; they are increasing their contribution strongly.”

So, there is no immediate impact on Galileo, Woerner said. “We will see what happens in the future and how the UK and the EU really define the details, but for us the relationship with the United Kingdom is of very great importance, so we will do our very best to see that their Brexit does not have some negative influence on the space sector.”

The Wider and Oh-So-Bothersome World
While some speakers showed little fear of tackling head-on the touchy issues of the day, others preferred to work around them. Asked whether, in the wake of recent political events, the EU should not move towards breaking off completely from any sort of dependence on the United States, including in the space sector, Wales’ own Lowri Evans, Director-General of the Commission’s DG GROW, chose to dodge, slightly, expounding instead on the value and merits of European competitiveness, public funding and downstream operators.

“The return on investment that we get as public funders of space depends on how much we can actually galvanize the new start-ups or people that are not traditional space actors,” Evans said, “to really create new value added that is created in Europe, made in Europe.”

She did refer to competition with the United States in general, saying, “This is a services economy, a burgeoning services economy, and we are determined to do everything we can there. Because, to take up the American analogy, if we are not activists here, from a public regulatory and financial perspective, we will leave the space data world to people like Google. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to leave it to the American multi-nationals.”

Woerner — at the earlier press briefing in Paris — had also addressed the change of American administrations, which, as usual, will involve a change in the NASA administration. “We are in contact with the transition team in order to ensure that ESA remains a strong partner of NASA in the future,” Woerner said.

There was nothing controversial here, even though one journalist wanted to know what would happen if the new American administration should decide to apply the same logic to its partnership with ESA as it has in its comments about unfair burden sharing within NATO.

Woerner provided a suitably respectful response, indicating essentially that ESA doesn’t work that way and its partnership with the United States is not under threat, so far.

Power to the People
The incoming American administration has been referred to on both sides of the Atlantic as “populist,” with all the varied connotations associated with that term. It was hard not to sense a tiny bit of “people power” creeping into the European Space Policy Conference, as exemplified by comments from various speakers.

If you recall, there was Buzek’s call for more “services for the people” and Evans’ emphasis on “Made in Europe.” Additionally, Pierre Delsaux, Deputy Director-General of the European Commission’s DG GROW, said, “We have several hundred people in this room, but we have millions and millions of real people outside, and we need those people to understand why space is important.”

Emilewicz believes everyday people in Poland need to know how important space is, but they also need to know that space is the EU and this is why they pay taxes. So, the people of Europe need to be considered and their support must be actively sought. Not that these aren’t the kinds of messages one always hears when European Space Policy is touted, but it did seem a little more palpable this time around.

MEP Cora van Nieuwenhuizen talked about the need for public awareness and support for space activities. “It’s not only necessary that all my colleagues in the European Parliament know that it’s really important, but you also need the support from your constituencies, so for that reason we need the general public to know a little bit more about what is happening.” She said people in the street in her constituency still don’t understand the full depth of penetration of space technologies in their daily lives.

Executive Vice-President, Head of CIS, Airbus Defence and Space Evert Dudok said, “If people don’t know why we invest in space, then what the heck… We have to do much more on applications that people can use.”

Bringing all the people together by bridging the digital divide was another people-centric priority highlighted by Jean-Loic Galle, President and CEO of Thales Alenia Space.

Back to Galileo
Participants were pulled back to the meat of the meeting by ESA Director of NAV Paul Verhoef, who hailed ever closer and ever more satisfactory cooperation between his Agency, the EC and the European GNSS Agency (GSA).

When discussing the launch of Galileo Initial Services, he sounded quite proud.

“It shows the world that we are progressing. Obviously, for many years there has been an undertone of ‘this system which is costing too much and it is too late’. So, I think that we have now put this behind us; the event in December was fantastic, also because it was mentioned around the world,” he said.

Verhoef said ESA’s United Space of Europe and Space 4.0 initiatives, and the EC’s new Space Strategy are all moving in the right direction, with the future focus on applications and integration of space services with terrestrial technologies. He cited the example of autonomous driving as one area where Europe can and should be moving forward very rapidly, working to integrate space-based navigation and Earth-observation services, a variety of ground-based technologies, the world of sensors, and all of the traditionally non-space user communities.

It is important, Verhoef said, for the space sector to put itself forward to provide better access to the space technologies that can make this integration happen. To this end, he stated, “We are trying to set up a common front office, if you will, between the application areas of navigation, communication and Earth observation, supported by our technical people at ESTEC (European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, Netherlands), in order to offer a way into the ESA system for those who think that space can offer a contribution to their solution.

“So from our side,” he said, “we are trying to reposition ESA in this new world. We have a sector that is confident in its capabilities and open to the challenges that lie ahead.”

Finally, it was GSA Executive Director Carlo des Dorides who drew all the strands together, emphasizing the importance of public support, the rapid adoption of Galileo services and their integration into a multi-GNSS and multi-system environment, as well as the development and economic exploitation of useful applications.

For des Dorides, the current role of the GSA is to make the European Space Strategy concrete, in a future where Galileo and GNSS will be, “…one element of an overall multi-system, providing positioning and navigation, so the answer will not be GNSS only.”

The new emerging paradigm for navigation and positioning, he said, has ubiquity as a key element: “Navigation and positioning data must be available with seamless continuity wherever it is needed, so urban canyons, mountains, tunnels, in the parking area, in the garage.”

Positioning data must be robust and secure, he added, and there will be a new emphasis on “ambient intelligence.”

“This is the capacity to interact with the external world, and, more and more, between users,” des Dorides said.

That includes human users but also things, the internet of things, which, across the globe, already include more connected things than connected people.

In sum, the 9th Annual Conference on European Space Policy saw leaders and members of various space-linked communities taking stock, discussing challenges and sketching a future based on strong cooperation and united effort, with an eye toward, but not cowed by, the “interesting times” we live in.

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Last October, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) Administrative Board reelected Carlo des Dorides as executive director of the GSA, giving him a second — and final — four-year term in charge of this key agency responsible for supporting the effective operation, maintenance, and security of Europe’s satellite navigation systems. We met with him recently at the GSA office in Prague to learn how he plans to see out his mandate.

Last October, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) Administrative Board reelected Carlo des Dorides as executive director of the GSA, giving him a second — and final — four-year term in charge of this key agency responsible for supporting the effective operation, maintenance, and security of Europe’s satellite navigation systems. We met with him recently at the GSA office in Prague to learn how he plans to see out his mandate.

“The GSA Board’s unanimous vote to keep me as the agency’s Director was really a recognition of the work of our entire staff,” says des Dorides. That staff, now spread across Europe, currently numbers about 140, from Prague to Toulouse and from Swanwick to Madrid.

The agency’s tasks include encouraging the exploitation of Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), market development, security accreditation and monitoring, project control, communication, procurement, and financing. It’s a lot for one man’s plate, but with his final term still mostly in front of him, des Dorides says, “I feel free; I’m here and I have the strong support of the EU institutions. I am encouraged.”

From Here to 2020
Des Dorides’ vision for the coming years, he says, starts with delivering what’s already on the table.

“EGNOS is well under control,” he says. “We have stable operation and service provision.” But there will be no easy life for Europe’s satellite-based augmentation system. “EGNOS is coming to the end of a cycle of relative calm equilibrium,” but new, major technical developments are on the way, with tenders to be announced in the coming months.

Planned upgrades include the release of EGNOS v2.4.2 software, bringing new enhancements at service level, including the extension of aircraft approach operations with vertical guidance (APV-I) coverage to the northeast, east, and southeast of Europe, and the setting up of new regional integrity monitoring stations (RIMS) to boost coverage in places like the Canary Islands. The GEO satellite constellation will also undergo further modernization.

“We want to apply EGNOS to more than just civil aviation,” says des Dorides. “We now have close to 200 airports with EGNOS-enabled landing approaches, and we will double this number by 2018-2019. But we want to export EGNOS outside of civil aviation, to maritime transport and the rail industry, where we have seen very good results.”

For Galileo, he says, initial services are still on course for October 2016. “Six to eight months later, in 2017, we will have a new operator/service provider. This is a major change; today the operator acts on a ‘best-effort’ basis. In the future, the operator will be assessed on a ‘service-level’ basis. The new operator will ensure stable continuity of Galileo operations, at full speed, with maturity in the following years. We want to have stable operation by 2020.”

Securing the PRS
Also coming soon is the secured Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS), one of the important features of Galileo, with access limited to authorized governmental bodies.

“In the past two to three years, we have been investing in the PRS user segment,” des Dorides says. “We have right now three important ongoing projects for establishing the EU industrial basis to build the PRS receiver system.” (See sidebar, “Current EU-funded PRS–Related Research Projects,” at the end of this article.)

Des Dorides says the PRS should be up, running, and mature by 2020.

“The PRS is very important,” des Dorides adds, “providing 50 percent of the answer to the question of why we have Galileo. But we need a proper receiver segment in Europe. If not, the PRS doesn’t make sense.”

As far as the discussions regarding U.S. access to the PRS, des Dorides says that’s not a part of his mandate. However, he notes that “the Dutch EU [European Union] Presidency has made it a priority to see negotiations on this question move forward by the European Council and Member States before the close of its tenure, which ends in June 2016.”

Those official negotiations will involve the European Commission and U.S. Department of State.

Change of Scene
The EU policy of physically moving certain of its agencies away from Brussels to far-flung places like Prague has been an interesting and, some believe, fruitful experiment, stimulating awareness, interest and engagement in “all that is EU” among local business communities, academia, and political establishments.

On the flipside, the process has also allowed some of the Union’s own best and brightest, like those working for the GSA, to get a feel for life away from the Brussels beltway.

In 2012, that meant uprooting GSA staff and their families, asking them to move to a foreign, albeit still thoroughly European, country, and, significantly, getting them to accept a new cost-of-living index (ouch!). Everyone did their best, and some difficult choices had to be made.

Now, nearly four years on, with senior staff mostly used to their new lives, and with newer staff coming on board who never knew the GSA in Brussels, the big move is starting to feel like water under the bridge. For des Dorides at least, there have been compensations, including a really cool office overlooking the Vltava River in downtown Prague.

The Czechs rolled out the red carpet when their first bona fide EU agency came to town, offering up the monumental, 1970s communist-era, former Czechoslovakian Ministry of Finance building as the GSA’s new HQ.

The striking tapestries that came with the place and now hang in des Dorides’ office are by the famous Czech artist František Kupka.

A soaring atrium greets one upon entering the building, and a large and very impressive conference room sits off to one side, newly fitted with the latest high-tech sound and communications gadgetry, spectacular lighting, and even a swath of twinkling stars to put you in the mood.

Be all that as it may, the GSA these days is less about show and more about action. It’s got money to spend and plenty to spend it on. “Our budget is about €500 million [US$566 million],” says des Dorides. About 95 percent of that is delegated, i.e., it’s money the GSA is told how and when to spend by the European Commission (EC) in Brussels.

“The GSA is like nothing else in the EU universe,’ des Dorides says. “The European Commission has a double role for us — it is our customer, it pays us to do a job, but it also sits on our administrative board; so, it is a stakeholder as well.”

It’s a two-way exchange: des Dorides spends about one day a week in Brussels while the GSA gets lots of visitors from the commission. “Coordination with the EC is very strong,” he says.

GSA and ESA Align
The GSA’s other key and long-standing partner is of course the European Space Agency (ESA), based in Paris and with important facilities in Toulouse, France, and Noordwijk, Netherlands, and elsewhere.

“In reality,” des Dorides says, the formal relationship between ESA and the GSA only came into force last year, when we signed the EGNOS delegation agreement.”

Although the GSA and ESA had been working together for much longer, that previous collaboration was channeled through ESA’s cooperation with the EC and other EU bodies. In any case, the official GSA/ESA relationship is now officially under way as far as EGNOS is concerned. The same will be true for Galileo, if, as expected, the ESA Council ratifies a similar agreement with the GSA for that program next December.

It’s all happening at the right moment, says des Dorides. With Jan Woerner taking over as ESA director general and with former EC satnav manager Paul Verhoef now in as ESA’s director of the Galileo program and navigation-related activities, des Dorides says he sees a “new cycle” beginning, with a group of cohorts that “appreciate each other’s constraints.”

“ESA has a contract with the GSA,” des Dorides explains, “to do the Galileo hardware, to build the infrastructure. We are now negotiating with ESA about the flow of responsibilities and how to transfer funds.”

This is, in fact, a reversal of sorts for ESA, which has generally been the body telling its own contractors what to do.

“Up to now there has been rigidity at ESA,” says des Dorides. “But with Paul, who I worked with when he was at the Commission, and with Jan Woerner, who comes from Germany’s space agency, DLR, we see a better understanding.”

Des Dorides says ESA and the GSA are working well together on the EGNOS project. Part of the solution, he says, has been simply being together, physically. “Seeing each other and interacting is important,” he says. Which is one reason the GSA has installed a small team to work alongside ESA staff at the Toulouse Space Center, doing EGNOS operations and service provision.

A similar arrangement could be in the works for Galileo, with a small GSA team possibly to be sent to ESA’s ESTEC facility in Noordwijk.

Meanwhile, a major investment will be made in a new, independent Galileo Reference Center.

“This will be the latest GSA facility,” des Dorides says, “which will be used for independent assessment of Galileo performance, checking all performance indicators. It is being built right now in Noordwijk, right next door to the ESTEC facility.”

Des Dorides says the EU and ESA could still benefit from better coordination of their GNSS-related efforts. With limited resources, the idea of further integrating GSA and ESA operations makes sense.

Funding for Downstream
The question of resources, and funding in particular, is, as ever, an ongoing concern. Someone once said, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.” Well, “No bucks (or euros), no Galileo” either. In the EU, that comes down to the EU Parliament, which ultimately approves budgets and hands out the cash.

And we all remember that one of the key arguments for building Galileo in the first place was that it would stimulate new downstream business. New European downstream business, that is.

Recently, in a special “space” issue of the EU Parliament’s own glossy magazine, The Parliament, Axelle Pomies of Galileo Services, an organization that represents downstream industry, pointed out that in the 2014–2020 time period, the EU will have invested around €8 billion in European GNSS infrastructure, but only around €200 million in the development of Galileo-capable products, value-added applications, and services; that’s a ratio of 40 to 1.

As Pomies writes, “The EU’s effort to gain its independence as regards GNSS by building its own infrastructure will be pointless if it is dependent on foreign applications, receivers, and devices.”

Des Dorides says Pomies has a point. After noting that her organization, Galileo Services, naturally and rightfully represents the interests of the private sector, des Dorides responds, “From the previous financial perspective to the current one, we have doubled the available downstream funding, from €75 to €150 million, plus another €100 million for ‘fundamental elements’, meaning receiver technologies.”

“Is 250 million enough?” he asks, “Maybe not, but it’s more than we’ve ever had in the past.” Des Dorides also points out that ESA has it’s own apps budget, namely the Integrated Application Program, and some further EU funding for “GNSS transversal projects,” being coordinated by the EC’s transport directorate-general (DG MOVE).

And then there are the EU member states with their own R&D programs. Here, des Dorides says, the important thing is to avoid overlap, and better coordination could improve things.

All that being said, with U.S., Russian, and even Chinese GNSS systems already in place or further along in development, Europe could do more to boost the Galileo brand.

Role for EU Parliament
Perhaps the fundamental question is simply why isn’t the EU laying out the dough for downstream development, when everyone knows that’s where the return is.

Des Dorides thinks, where the Parliament in concerned, it might be a question of culture. He says the GSA has been making directed efforts to cultivate its relations with the Parliament. “We need to bridge with them,” he says, “and that is starting. We have GSA people doing that job, taking steps to close the gap with the Parliament, and in return we’re now getting more questions and some new ideas.”

To be fair, the onus for getting the funding right cannot be placed solely on the Parliament. Yes, they approve budgets, but it is still the Commission, with the help of the wider European space community, that writes the budgets, that requests the funding, and upon whom the burden falls of explaining, defending, and fighting for that support. All efforts by the space community to win more hearts and minds in the Parliament are a part of that process.

Des Dorides reminds us that with EU institutions everything takes a long time. Meanwhile, the GSA has the budget that it has, and the question then becomes how to direct the available funding to where it really needs to go.

Des Dorides says the European Commission’s current research framework program, “Horizon 2020,” is good at financing research and innovation, but not necessarily work that is very close to the business end.

“Businesses don’t use H2020 because it takes too long,” he says, “from the call launch to the award process and final contracts, it can take 18 months before a project starts. This is just too long in the private sector.”

For that reason, he says, the EU may need to think about a new kind of funding instrument, something more reactive, something that could, for example, take the place of Europe’s missing venture capital.

“Here in Europe,” he says, “we don’t have a venture capital culture — but maybe can we simulate a venture capital approach from the public sector.”

The focus, des Dorides says, needs to be on innovative GNSS-related business ideas, with all funding options on the table, and all potential players in the discussion, including the European Investment Bank.

“There are people who know more about that than I do, but we probably need to tailor a better product for GNSS investment,” he says.

More to Do?
Looking beyond the GSA’s patch of ground, but not so very far after all, we peek across the fence to consider the other flagship EU space program, “Copernicus,” i.e., the program formerly know as GMES, the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security program, and what do we see? A huge and elaborate EU space infrastructure program that seems to have paid little or no attention to its own downstream market potential. Sound familiar?

One EU insider says, “Companies in the U.S. are making big money by providing added-value services based on EU-generated Earth observation data!” Shouldn’t someone be looking at this?

The potential synergies between positioning and Earth observation technologies will not have escaped the attention of anyone reading this article. More and more, users of either of these will want and need to both resources to answer the questions, “where am I” and “what’s around me.”

But, des Dorides accepts, the two programs, Galileo and Copernicus, are separate entities today, with different histories: “Copernicus started as a public sector–oriented program, with little interest in the private sector. With Galileo, we have been more in touch with companies, with the private sector, from the beginning.”

A marriage made in heaven?

“Rationalization of the two programs will happen,” says des Dorides.

Does that mean a convergence, an interconnecting of the two? The answer is we don’t know yet, but we know people are thinking about it.

Today there is no EU agency focused on Earth observation as GSA is on GNSS or to look after its market development.

Big on Market Development
Indeed, the GSA puts a lot of effort indeed into market development. The agency carries out its own research into GNSS market trends, and then makes the information it gets available in the form of an annual GNSS Market Report, whose publication has become a fixture on the GNSS calendar. The aim is to help European companies understand what’s going on and hopefully get a leg up on the competition.

Saying thanks and “so long” to des Dorides, we wander over to meet his top market person, Gian Gherardo Calini, whose office view rivals that of the Director himself.

Calini knows a lot about GNSS market trends, and he makes it his business to make sure Europe knows about them, too.

So what’s on his mind? He answers, “Geofencing, for the elderly and for your pets; autonomous vehicles, drones, robots for future farming.

“GNSS growth cannot be forecast,” Calini says. “So much is unseen, as yet unimagined. We need to exploit to the max, and so much depends on us. Does the supply create the demand? Or is it the other way around? The truth is somewhere in the middle. We are living in an innovative century, where technologies are driving the market, creating new markets and new demands. What we need today are engineers with a ‘market mind.’ We need Silicon Valley types here in Europe.”

At this point, Calini announces the launch of a new User Technology Report, before the end of this summer, to complement the GSA Market Report.

“What we want to know and what we talk about in this new Report is what are the trends in user technologies, and especially the ones we haven’t been thinking about enough, like Big Data, the Internet of Things, connected cars, ubiquitous positioning, assisted GNSS for emergency services, augmented reality, Google glasses, crowd sourcing for LBS in real time. . . . The list goes on.”

Sitting with us is GSA Market Development Officer Reinhard Blasi, who points out, “Positioning is a key enabler of all this,” and adds, “Galileo will be interoperable with the next generation of GPS; so, these combined dual-frequency systems will enable extremely high accuracy and a high level of confidence for safety-critical applications. The foreseen commercial service will include authentication for the professional market and unheard-of precise point positioning.”

Blasi says users don’t care about which constellation they are using; they are only interested in performance. But should the user know about Galileo? Does the GSA want them to know?

“We don’t necessarily need to advertise Galileo to the mass market user,” Blasi says, “But we think policy makers and receiver manufacturers do need to know.”

Head of Communications Donna Reay confirms that a big mega-campaign aimed at the public is not especially in the works in the run-up to Galileo initial services.

“For now we want to be humble,” says Blasi, “We have learned our communication lessons — not to raise expectations too high. We want to be cautious, but this will be a milestone for industry.

“More satellite launches are upcoming,” he says. “Galileo is finally gaining momentum. The hardware is ready, the software is mostly ready; so, now it is just a question of switching over to ‘OK, we are now using it.’”

SIDEBAR: Current EU-funded PRS–Related Research Projects

Project FRAME – GSA/OP/20/14 – procurement closed
Provision of processes and tools to support GSA activities related to the definition of new PRS use cases, including the conditions of coexistence with traditional PRS use cases.

Project PRISMA – GSA/OP/07/15 – procurement on-going
‘Development of low-end operational PRS receivers including security modules architectures’

Project DISPATCH – GSA/OP/02/15 – procurement on-going
Development of end-to-end prototype capable of testing the security aspects of PRS service provision by innovative PRS server-based technologies to support future applications.

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The events brought out all of the relevant voices and served to illustrate not only the disposition of materiel and troops but also their intent and even the level of morale. 

Europe’s space community rang in the New Year with two of its brightest annual fixtures: the European Union (EU) Space Policy conference in Brussels and the European Space Agency (ESA) media briefing in Paris.

The events brought out all of the relevant voices and served to illustrate not only the disposition of materiel and troops but also their intent and even the level of morale. 

Insights from ESA briefing can be found in a news article in the “360 Degrees” section here. Here we will focus on the broad range of personalities and sentiments expressed at the Brussels event.

Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the EU Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship, and SMEs (DG-GROW), i.e., the “Space Commissioner,” opened the Space Policy conference with good news about Galileo. After a troubled 2014, she said, 2015 turned out much better. 

“In 2015, we did indeed launch, as we said we would the last time we were here, six new Galileo satellites, doubling the number of satellites now into orbit.”

The European Commission (EC) will continue to build Galileo in 2016, striving for a speedy deployment schedule, including another batch of satellites that will enable the launch of initial services before the end of the year. 

“This is a challenge, but I count on ESA to make it happen,” Bieńkowska said.

So, if it doesn’t happen, we all know whose fault it is.

Galileo, Bieńkowska said, is not just an infrastructure; the EC is working to ensure that citizens get the full benefits, by promoting greater private and public uptake, with space data and apps expected to proliferate into many fields. And the commission will also work to identify and exploit synergies with the defense community.

All of which fits in nicely with Bieńkowska’s new main priority in the space arena — the EC’s 2016 European Space Strategy initiative. Although details are still fuzzy, the general idea seems to be to come up with “an ambitious strategy” to promote innovation and competitiveness in this key sector, to be adopted in the fall of 2016. Of course, it will encompass all of the EU’s space initiatives, not just Galileo.

“We will not develop the Strategy in isolation,” Bieńkowska said. “The coming months will feature a broad consultation process, and you are all invited to participate, starting today.”

And Bieńkowska repeated her call for improved governance, something we found surprising when she said it last year, coming, as it did, on the heels of a major governance breakthrough for the EC-ESA-GSA triangle.

This time she elaborated.

“Governance is not an end in itself; it is about how it allows us to deliver benefits.” 

By governance, we understand, she probably means cooperation among all the governing bodies, including national agencies, and, again, not just with respect to the Galileo program. “We must recognize the increasing role of the EU in space strategy,” Bieńkowska concluded.

Many themes and topics were covered at the Brussels event, and some recurring threads emerged, including, of all things, the importance of culture.

But first, a bit more on the nuts and bolts of Galileo. 

Matthias Petschke, director of EU Satellite Navigation Programs at DG-GROW said the “recovered” satellites 5 and 6, the ones launched into anomalous orbits in 2014, will ultimately serve a useful purpose, perhaps in relation to the Galileo search and rescue (SAR) service. “We are not writing them off,” he assured his audience.

He also reported good progress on the Galileo ground segment and repeated Bieńkowska’s announcement of initial services this year, including the Public Regulated Service (PRS). The much-anticipated Commercial Service (CS), however, is not likely to be ready, Petschke conceded, and indeed the details of how it will work have yet to be finalized.

We do know one thing relating to CS, he said. “On the user side, we see a big demand for authentication, for trusted PNT, and this will be a key element for new pay-as-you-go services like road charging.”

Culture Counts
“Culture,” with a capital C, and a diversity of it, are defining characteristics of the European character. Proof: although English was the working language at Space Policy event, a fair number chose to address the conference in the more poetic language of Molière, slightly fewer in Italian or German.

The Europeans remain rightly interested in who they are, and in being who they are, particularly in relation to the United States. Here are just some of the things people were saying about Europe, who and what it is, and who it isn’t:

Monika Hohlmeier, chair of the European Parliament’s Sky & Space Intergroup, said, “In America, they act first, then see what happens. Here in Europe, we think first and then talk a lot before we do anything.”

François Auque, head of Space Systems at Airbus Defence and Space, said, “Traditionally, culturally, we are terrified of failure. But today we are realizing that failure is acceptable.”

Michel de Rosen, president and CEO of Eutelsat, said, “Europe must lead, but Europe must also learn. The U.S. Department of Defense knows sovereignty is not the enemy of private sector, including private satellite operators. Europe needs to learn this too.”

Marco Fuchs, CEO of Galileo satellite builder OHB, urged, “We need to dare to start new projects. We shouldn’t be talking about just using Galileo. We need to be looking towards the next big project.”

Member of European Parliament Cora van Nieuwenhuizen also referenced, in her own way, Europe’s fear of failure, and its result: “We have a problem in Europe with venture capital. We put a lot of investment into start-ups — but as much as we do, they end up in Silicon Valley anyway.”

Maroš Šefčovič, European Commission vice-president, spoke about daring to look ahead: “I just heard something about US legislators who are discussing passing new laws to cover space mining, understanding that one day it will be cheaper to bring raw materials home from space than to bring them up from bottom of the sea. That’s looking ahead and this is the kind of visionary approach we need in Europe.”

Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of France’s CNES, drew the conference’s attention to the unexpected passing, just a day earlier, of the British musical artist David Bowie, who’s portrayal of an astronaut in his classic song ‘Space Oddity’ inspired millions. The mention of Bowie drew an unusual and heart-felt round of applause from the room. The Europeans do, after all, know good culture when they see it (or hear it).

Finally, Lowri Evans, the European Commission’s new Director-General of DG-GROW, being very much in touch with who and what she is, called out “Welsh!” when Parliament Vice-President Antonio Tajani imprudently referred to her as “English.” Talk about a “faux pas!”

Explain That?
Europe is a diverse place, and so it can be misleading to pretend that there is a single unitary European culture at all. But we might generalize, and many did at the Brussels conference, about the effectiveness of the communication practices among the European space community.

Thierry Mandon, France’s Minister of State for Higher Education and Research, said, “In space, Europe is world class, not just in engineering and technologies but also in the work of our institutions. But we need to tell our European success stories, like Galileo and Copernicus, better than we are doing now. We need to encourage our students, turn opinion, and sell our space programs.”

Jerzy Buzek, distinguished chair of the European Parliament’s ITRE Committee, also stressed to need to communicate more effectively: “We need to explain space to our public opinion. If we need more money, we need to say why.”

Buzek saluted Johann-Dietrich Wörner, the new Director General of the European Space Agency (ESA), referring to one of Wörner’s more forward-thinking ideas. “Your ‘Moon Village’ idea seems crazy,” Buzek said, ‘but maybe we need a crazy idea.” Fifty years ago, he recalled, the United States turned a crazy idea — sending a man to the moon — into half a century of technological excellence and space achievements.

To which sentiment, Pascale Ehrenfreund, chair of DLR’s Executive Board, jumped in. “The ‘Moon Village’ is not a crazy idea but a long-term road map, leading to a far goal with many defined milestones.” 

Ehrenfreund, by the way, is the person who replaced Wörner as DLR’s Executive Board chair when he went off to head up ESA.

Turning again to culture and communication, Ehrenfreund continued, “Solutions that work in the U.S. don’t necessarily work here.” She said Europe shouldn’t be afraid to talk about its successes, including the Rosetta mission, and she lamented, as had van Nieuwenhuizen, the crippling lack of venture capital in Europe.

Finally, Pierre Delsaux, EC Deputy Director-General of DG-GROW, supported the notion, now becoming more popular by the minute, of better communication. “All of us here are convinced of the importance of space, but what we need to do is convince everyone else. We all have a duty to explain.”

GSA Head Speaks
Taking a welcome break between sessions, we sat down for a chat with Carlo des Dorides, executive director of European GNSS Agency (GSA), the organization tasked with delivering Galileo services, to see if he could explain a few things.

The Galileo open signal will deliver plenty of new benefits to users everywhere in the world. So, how do you explain to the European taxpayer that only he/she is paying for it? It is true, des Dorides said, that the new precision and increased availability resulting from a whole new constellation of navigation satellites will certainly create new economic opportunities for everyone. “It’s like building a highway,” he said, “We can all use it, and we all need it to create new value.”

As for what Europe gets that no one else gets, he pointed to the PRS, with its more robust and secure signal. “The PRS is an EU 28–only service – with some exceptions. We are not talking only about defense but also institutional users — for example, banks, the insurance industry, national authorities and civil protection.”

The Commission is currently undertaking highly confidential negotiations for third-party access to the PRS, including with the US. And we know that manufacturers are moving forward with the preparation of PRS receivers.

Is the 2016 date for initial services achievable? After all, we’ve seen too-optimistic timetables for Galileo before. Des Dorides said the timetable is realistic. In October, he said, if all goes according to plan, the first tests of initial services will be undertaken. 

“This will be a very important opportunity,” he said, “not just for the system itself but as a signal to the market. Receiver manufacturers need this signal to be able to release their new chipsets.”

What kind of performance will we see? 

“With a constellation of 10 operational satellites to start with, we don’t expect to see the final performance levels,” said des Dorides, “but we will immediately see superior continuity and availability with the initial service.”

Des Dorides said initial PRS pilot projects are planned, and the SAR service will also be launched on a limited basis. Just as Petschke acknowledged, the CS, des Dorides said, is not ready, but it is coming along and will feature high accuracy and authentication.

The world as a whole certainly is benefiting from the development and deployment of new global satellite navigation systems. The current scenario sees at least four major systems delivering worldwide coverage within the next 10 years, and most future receivers being able to use all of the signals at any given time.

So, is this really the most efficient way to run world navigation, with four overlapping systems, each with its own complete hierarchy, from political to technical to operational control? Wouldn’t it make more sense to consolidate at some point and save a little money?

“I personally think this is the way to go,” said des Dorides. “The current view of many, however, is to see the diversity of the systems as valuable in itself, reducing vulnerability. And then, these are also high-strategic-value assets; so, political convergence is needed first.”

“But we do need a vision,” des Dorides added, “and it is my own view that we need to bring the systems closer together.”

Big Data and Dual Use
Back on the Space Policy conference program, we saw some serious discussions about data and defense taking center stage.

Carlos Suarez, executive vice-president of Indra Sistemas, a large, multinational Spanish information technology and defense systems company, said, “Big data, combining all data that is geo-located, even from social media, presents a huge opportunity. But,” he adds, “U.S. industry is always ahead of us — and I mean companies like Google and Amazon, not just the classic aerospace giants.”

Philippe Brunet, the EC’s director for Aerospace, Maritime and Defense Industries at DG-GROW, responded to a question from the audience on the wisdom of releasing Copernicus-generated Earth observation data for free, and then seeing companies like Google using it to create exciting new apps and services. Google then offers such services to its users for free, essentially undercutting any potential opportunities for European (or any other) small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to use this data to develop and sell their own apps.

Brunet said the policy of open and free data is fundamental, and ultimately benefits everyone. “There are lots of SMEs in Europe making money off of free U.S. LandSat data,” he pointed out. “That’s U.S.-generated data, and European companies are not paying for it. Copernicus gives us raw data, but the added value, where the money is made, is in the algorithms, and that opportunity is there for everyone.”

On the subject of dual use, Brunet said, “We in Europe now feel the threats all along our borders and within our borders and the EU is reassessing these threats.” 

Next June, he said, the EU’s new global strategy on security and foreign policy will be unveiled, with DG-GROW coordinating and with input from the European External Action Service (EEAS). Space will be an important element in this new strategy, Brunet confirmed.

The fact is, “defense” was, not so long ago, virtually a taboo subject within the European Commission, where, Brunet said, “the concept of civil programs and ownership is fundamental.”

But the line between civil and military is becoming more and more blurred, he argued. “Raw data produced by satellites is neither civilian nor military. It is the way that the data is shaped, based on need, that makes it civilian or military, the way it is used to cover specific needs.” 

He pointed to the example of weather satellites that serve average citizens every day but also provide crucial information for military operations.

“Galileo,” Brunet continued, “is a civilian system under civilian control, but the PRS, for example, will be suitable for applications where robustness and reliability are needed. It will be up to governments to decide who can use it and what for.”

Jorge Domecq, chief executive of the European Defense Agency, expressed concern in simple terms. “In Europe, the European Commission, ESA, we have never had a comprehensive dual-use approach, and this is damaging to cooperation with our partners.”

Jean-Pierre Serra, vice-president for defense and security, Airbus Defense and Space, put it more simply still. “Given budget restrictions, we must use space assets for both.”

Other notable speakers took the stage in Brussels, lending words of wisdom and strong encouragement of a more political nature, including Vice-President Antonio Tajani, but we fear we may already have tarried too long in the European capital.

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Speakers at the low-in-profile but high-in-content International Association of Institutes of Navigation (IAIN) conference in Prague this year threw into stark relief some of the big GNSS programs and even bigger GNSS questions.

We’ll let Prof.-Dr. Günter Hein, former head of the European Space Agency (ESA) EGNOS and GNSS Evolution Program Department and Emeritus of Excellence at University FAF Munich, start the show. Hein delivered a fact-filled and level-headed presentation on the status of Galileo, the European Union’s civil-owned and non-military GNSS, with slides and information provided by ESA.

The civil owner of Galileo, namely the European Commission (EC), working hand-in-hand with ESA, has struggled to keep the program on course and on schedule, but now 10 Galileo satellites are now in orbit, most of which are functioning normally.

Following the latest launch of two Galileo satellites in September, a recent ESA communication states that the next Galileo launch — onboard a Soyuz rocket and the third to take place in 2015 — will go ahead on December 17. It will carry Galileo satellites 11 and 12 now ready and waiting at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

Hein discussed the status of several Galileo satellites currently on deck, in various stages of preparation, with the next launch to follow the one in December, this time onboard an Ariane-5 rocket, set for October 2016. He also outlined work to finalize the Galileo ground mission segment.

“The program’s top objective,” Hein said, “is to ramp-up, roll out, stabilize and provide committed Galileo services 24/7 to the user community,” all of which goes without saying. But he also laid out the program’s vision beyond full operational capability.

“It may sound a bit crazy,” he said, “talking about a next generation when the first-generation system is not yet operational, but there is a future and we need to plan for it.”

Current work on Galileo’s Next GEN, Hein explained, is concerned first with identifying architecture- evolution drivers linked to mass and professional markets, governmental users, and search and rescue services. Then there is infrastructure evolution, with a clear intent on the part of the program to apply lessons learned.

The program is working to identify performance drivers, assessing key architecture building blocks and developing new architecture options, and, importantly, putting together a clear vision for where the program wants to go and a concrete transition scenario. (A Thought Leadership Series question and answer column will appear in an upcoming issue of Inside GNSS featuring Hein discussing the Galileo Evolutions program in greater detail.)

In conclusion, Hein said, “Galileo works, FOC [full operational capability] satellite production is well under way, the ground segment is ‘early services-ready,’ and space segment deployment is proceeding based on Soyuz and Ariane-5 launch capabilities.”

The mission to recover the ill-fated Galileo satellites launched into anomalous orbit last year is continuing, he said, with plans to put them to the best possible use, whatever that may be, although they will probably never be able to fulfill their originally intended functions.

Everyone seemed to appreciate Hein’s candor.

Vítejte v Praze
Of the speakers arrayed at the head of the room in Prague, aside from some local politicians, only Jean- Marc Pieplu, EGNOS Exploitation Program manager for the European GNSS Agency (GSA), was qualified to offer an authentic Vítejte v Praze (“Welcome to Prague”) message. The GSA, charged with delivering Galileo services, has for some years made its home in the Czech capital, well away from the hectic and complicated EU headquarters in Brussels.

Pieplu described a new EGNOS-based “localizer performance with vertical guidance” (LPV) service with 200-foot decision height for aircraft approach and landing. EGNOS — formally (and lengthily) the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service — is the European counterpart to America’s GPS Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS). And he announced the launch of the procurement process for EGNOS V3, which will feature dual-frequency capabilities.

As for early Galileo services, once proudly promised for “end of 2014,” Pieplu said those can now be expected, “sometime in 2016.” Asked later if he could be more specific, he said, “Maybe mid- 2016, but we can’t be sure.”

A sensible answer indeed, when in fact the date really is unknown — much better than creating too optimistic an expectation only to dash hopes when the promised date comes around. Lessons learned.

Europe has a lot to be proud of. Getting Galileo early services launched on time is not one of them, but it doesn’t need to be. The system is now clearly on its way and will arrive in its own time.

Four More Years!
We now know that only days ago Carlo des Dorides was re-elected for a second term as GSA Executive Director by the EU member states.

Given the somewhat rocky history of the GSA and its predecessors — the Galileo Joint Undertaking and Galileo Supervisory Agency (the original GSA) — this is a positive sign for the agency. Whereas faces and personalities tend to pop in and out of the EU space family portrait, des Dorides has become a reassuring fixture, a positive persuader who speaks with a steady and lucid voice for the Galileo program. We know of no one who has an unkind word to say about him, and in old Europe that’s huge.

Speaking of faces popping in and out, Elzbieta Bienkowska is said to be doing “OK,” with a whole lot on her plate as the still-fresh commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs — EU space affairs being part of her responsibilities. Actually, she doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time talking about space, but that may come.

One is led to believe that she could be fighting more than just the usual obstacles facing any “newbie” in the post. Bienkowska, who is Polish, is making her way in an established European bureaucracy traditionally averse to female leadership and even more traditionally averse to Eastern European leadership. Quite a row to hoe for all those new, post-Cold War EU member-staters, with their youth and impatience to make a difference in a field — space — still dominated by engineers and technicians on the one hand and old-EU politicians on the other.

Also entering the EU space fray is Lowri Evans, new director-general for the corresponding internal market, industry, etc., EC organization known more briefly (and optimistically) as DG-GROW or sometimes DG-Growth. Evans, a British qualified chartered accountant who moved over from heading the Directorate-General for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, takes over from Daniel Calleja Crespo and is said to be energetic yet efficient, positive, and businesslike.

Lowri’s appointment has been characterized as demonstrating EC President Juncker’s commitment to improving the gender balance among European Commission senior management. Indeed, the Commission has pledged to increase the number of female managers to 40 percent by the end of Juncker’s mandate. If this does have anything to do with Evans’ appointment, then we can only applaud the Commission’s grown-up attitude towards fairness and hope that she really is the best person for the job.

We can at least expect to see a refreshing change in management styles, where gender-fuelled egos and personal politics, it has been suggested, have sometimes played a role in how things end up happening.

Who’s in Charge?
Back at the IAIN event in Prague, the venerable and ever-engaging David Last, past president of the UK’s Royal Institute of Navigation, among many other things, somehow managed to inform, amuse, and frighten the conference all at the same time.

In his presentation on “the navigation of navigation” — actually a kind of disturbing parable recounted in the past tense — Last actually described the situation as it now stands, in which no government is structured in such a way as to effectively manage today’s navigation satellite systems.

“My government, your government, and national governments around the world were completely unprepared to respond to this single technology on which depended, and from which profited, activities as diverse as missiles, farming, and the stock market,” Last said.

Governments have separate ministries for each of those application areas, and many such departments and agencies exist, overseeing the various transport modes, including search and rescue and emergency response services, but also the banking sector, where navigation satellites carry out the critical time-stamping and synchronization function for financial transactions worldwide.

And then there is the agriculture sector, industry in general, trade, communications, and energy — all, in their own particular and peculiar ways, now putting GNSS signals to important use, in many cases having completely left behind their back-up and legacy systems and solutions.

Must Vulnerability Be Proven?
Last went on — and here’s where the story gets frightening — bringing up, as he often does, the deeply discomfiting question of positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) vulnerability.

As just one in a list of clear and present threats to GNSS operations, Last pointed out that, “Terrorists can buy or build a jammer . . . that is powerful enough to affect large areas of a major city from a publicly accessible location. Despite this, in many parts of the world there are now powerful myths: that the local version of GNSS is immune to GPS jamming.”

Combine this with the ever-deepening and -widening dependence on GNSS among so many crucial sectors, add to that the vague and disjointed oversight of global GNSS by multiple national governments, and, well, the hair on the back of one’s neck positively rises.

So far, no government seems to have heeded Last’s repeated calls for a more realistic view of the world’s reliance on GNSS, but of course that would require that governments first fully comprehend the nature and extent of the problem, and for that we must all continue to wait.

Last’s rather bleak picture, delivered in his inimitable lighthearted fashion, led one participant to ask the ever-so-slightly horrifying question of whether we need a major catastrophe to occur before someone in a high place finally decides to do something about PNT vulnerability. Does vulnerability need to be proven? No one seemed to have a good answer to that one either.

In a separate conversation, the GSA’s Jean-Marc Pieplu acknowledged that the EU is no exception when it comes to inadequate GNSS oversight. As anyone who has tried to get an answer from the Commission on the question of PNT vulnerability can attest.

Asked to comment on Last’s dire sketch, Pieplu said, “The EC is indeed in this position of spread responsibilities.”

Who at the EC owns the question of vulnerability? Pieplu says, “DG-Growth should be the entry point, but these questions are really larger than any one DG.”

China Did What?
A small, yet sore thumb–like detail sure to evoke at least a little bit of consternation among the European contingent, if they noticed, appeared in one of Last’s slides. Ostensibly listing the various world satellite navigation systems, the slide presented on a top line in large type size GPS, GLONASS, and China’s BeiDou Satellite System (BDS). Next line down, in a slightly smaller font, sat Japan’s QZSS, Europe’s Galileo, and India’s IRNSS — rather like the second tier of candidates in the U.S. Republican presidential race.

At least one member of the press cringed. Once hailed as the world’s soon-to-be-third global navigation satellite system, Galileo has now achieved the lower line, a full rung below the real “big three.”

But this state of affairs, we believe, says a lot more about China than it does about the EU. The Chinese have set their ambitious goals without allowing any internal debate on the matter to afflict the public consciousness. Things get decided in China in their own fashion, and then the Chinese, with steady determination and little or no hoopla, simply get the job done.

China’s GNSS players do show up periodically at these international events, where they proceed to calmly lay out the latest in a never-ending series of truly impressive accomplishments, as they advance their own world-class GNSS, the BeiDou system.

In Prague, it was Jing Li, deputy director of the BDS Office, China Transport Telecommunication & Information Center (CTTIC), who updated the conference on BeiDou and more. The first step, he reminded an attentive audience, had been “active” satellite services for China and its surrounding areas in 2000 in which positions were calculated in ground facilities and retransmitted to users. Then came passive BeiDou services for the Asia-Pacific region in 2012. The third step, he said, will be global passive services by 2020. And you can bet your bottom dollar (or euro or yuan) that it will happen.

China launched three BeiDou spacecraft in 2015, the 17th, 18th, and 19th satellites placed into orbit. Li outlined some interesting work being undertaken to validate a new type of navigation signal system and to demonstrate an inter-satellite link.

The program is also continuing its work on at least one augmentation system, called National Differential BDS (NDBDS), which will use existing GNSS monitoring resources to deliver real-time positioning and navigation services with meter/ decimeter-level accuracy over a wide area, and centimeter-level accuracy regionally. Complete deployment of NDBDS will happen by the end of this year.

As for the BeiDou’s other near-term objectives, Li says the program will continue to improve the continuous stability and accuracy of BeiDou services. It will launch another one or two satellites in 2015 and accelerate the deployment of a next-generation global constellation, along with the publication of relevant policies and action plans and the promotion of mass-market applications.

Wow.

Truth about Russia-U.S. Relations
Completing the presentations by non-GPS heavy-hitters, Sergey Revnivykh of ISS-Reshetnev’s GLONASS Directorate related Russia’s ongoing program aimed at improving GLONASS performance, including space and ground segments. Another impressive set of accomplishments and intentions were detailed.

Revnivykh insisted on describing GLONASS as part of a wider multi-constellation system, but then he also pointed out that the two biggest parts of that system are not talking to each other, at least officially.

“Our work with the U.S. is currently a bit suspended, but we have agreements that we are implementing,” Revnivykh said. Ray Clore, representing the U.S. National Coordination Office for Space-Based PNT, acknowledged that official U.S. policy, since the Russian incursion in Crimea, still decrees that no bilateral cooperation in many areas, including GNSS affairs, take place between the two countries. Asked what Russia needs to do to get that started again, Clore dodged, “I have to defer to our political decision-makers.”

One thing we can confirm is that Clore and Revnivykh were allowed to sit in the same room together in Prague, although no one saw them shake hands or exchange knowing glances. At the multilateral level, however, working relationships are more collegial and productive. .

Revnivykh says the truth is the U.S.-imposed suspension has only affected activities on the political level — the signing of joint statements and such. “But at the expert level, which is the only level that really matters, we have never stopped working together,” he assured.

For example, Revnivykh and the U.S. State Department’s David Turner, co-chair the multilateral the International Committee on GNSS (ICG) Working Group A on GNSS compatibility and interoperability “We must work together. Our systems are being used at the same time by the same end-users,” Revnivykh says.

How to end the suspension? “We have to find common interests,” Revnivykh said, making light of recent moves in the United States to require American users of “foreign GNSS signals” to get a license. “This hurts only the U.S. user,” he said. “It makes no sense. It is only a political move. It doesn’t affect Russia.”

One participant, who shall not be named, from a country with no GNSS at all, and who therefore has to rely on the critical positioning services of other nations for his surveying business, said he is not partial to any of the GNSS super-powers.

“I am skeptical, listening to the U.S. and Russia and China proclaiming their lofty ideals of free access, cooperation, and benefits to all. These are still military powers with military GNSS systems,” he said. “They’ve all got their own interests and we are basically at their mercy.”

Where is (civil-owned and non-military) Galileo when you need it?

At Last
And that brings us, finally, back to David Last, who, not least, suggested that the common conception of the various GNSS programs as being somehow in competition with each other is just not useful.

“Our world is changing fast,” he said. “We now have multiple satellite navigation systems.” Many at the conference, he proposed, would be thinking in terms of a number of discrete systems, “each vertically integrated, with satellites, control systems, receivers, applications and users, overseen by a national or regional administration. There will be talk of Galileo markets and GPS markets, for example.

“The relationships between these systems remains an area of friction: in Europe, might Galileo be mandated; in the U.S. is the reception of ‘foreign’ GNSS illegal, immoral, unAmerican? The view is that of governments and diplomats.”

For his part, Last said, “I suggest that we are approaching the end of the ‘era of systems.’ We are now in the ‘era of GNSS.’”

Consider again the case of the enemy jammer: a smartphone shows a whole series of satellite navigation signals being received; switch on the jammer and they all disappear as one. “The constellations live together — and they die together,” Last said. “They have simply become components of a single GNSS.”

Which suddenly makes the greater part of the conference presentations, (and much of this current Brussels View) seem a bit primitive, silly, and perhaps irrelevant.

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