The pentagon’s most creative research agency is seeking its second round of proposals for a system of deep sea devices that can lie dormant on the sea floor for years and then be triggered from a distance to deploy payloads including air and ocean drones.

The pentagon’s most creative research agency is seeking its second round of proposals for a system of deep sea devices that can lie dormant on the sea floor for years and then be triggered from a distance to deploy payloads including air and ocean drones.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, is asking for designs for its Upward Falling Payloads (UFP) Program. The goal is to ease the expense and complexity of maintaining a global navy by seeding the seas in advance with less expensive equipment that can be activated as needed. The protective containers or ‘nodes’ are to be concealed on the ocean floor in forward areas. They must be able to rise to the surface (“fall upward”) on command and deliver “a wide range of unmanned and distributed systems to the sub-surface, surface, and air,” according to the request for bids.

The underwater portion of the system has to be able to survive depths of more than 6 km, last up to 5 years, and be operational no more than two hours after being directed to surface from the seafloor. The contents of the bottom-dwelling storage lockers will be non-lethal, according to DARPA but their capabilities are being kept close to the vest by program managers.

This is actually the second phase of the program. During the first phase, which began last year, more than 10 study and design teams worked to determine payload missions, approaches for long-range communications, deep-ocean high-pressure containment, and techniques for payload launch. The agency now wants proposals in two areas: 1) the development and demonstration of the storage node and the ‘riser’ or surfacing system and 2) the design and development of the communication technology. Integrating the two will take place in Phase 3, which potential prime contractors can include in their Phase 2 proposals if they wish.

Teams pursuing the contract are to demonstrate their systems in 2016.

The proposals are due on May 21. Information is available here.

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Officials will release a draft solicitation for the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) new Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and field questions at a late-May meeting in Washington.

Officials will release a draft solicitation for the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA’s) new Center of Excellence for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and field questions at a late-May meeting in Washington.

The Center is being launched to support the FAA’s mission to ensure safety during the integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system. Members of the winning consortium will be required to perform research to help fill the gaps in the agency’s integration roadmap including, at a minimum, work involving air traffic control interoperability, airport ground operations, command and control, detect and avoid, human factors, system performance, privacy practices for UAS operations, system engineering and training and certification for the crew members and pilots of unmanned aircraft.

Officials plan to select a “geographically disbursed consortium” of universities and private and public-sector affiliates based in part on the applicant’s existing transportation program and research resources. They will also weigh the projects the applicants propose and their ability to provide leadership and disseminate research results. The FAA will provide matching grants to help the winning team conduct certain projects and may also contract with the center’s members for direct support. The center will enable research institutions other than those selected as FAA test ranges last year to “contribute to the FAA’s UAS research and development efforts,” the agency told Inside Unmanned Systems. The agency said, however, it “is not precluding the Test Sites from competing on this effort.”

Officials plan to announce their choice by the end of next year.

The meeting will be held May 28-29 and will be open to the public on a first-come basis until all slots are filled. Those wanting to attend, however, must submit an online application for registration by May 22. A link to the form can be found in the upper right corner of the Web page.

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Nine teams of students and private sector inventors will compete this fall to see who can build the best detect-and-avoid system for small unmanned aircraft.

Nine teams of students and private sector inventors will compete this fall to see who can build the best detect-and-avoid system for small unmanned aircraft.

The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airspace Operations Challenge, which offers a $500,000 prize, will be held Sept. 10-17 in Indiana. The event is one of NASA’s Centennial Challenges, a program inspired by the Wright Brothers that aims to engage the creativity of citizen inventors to solve important aerospace problems. More than 20 Centennial Challenges have been held so far with teams taking home nearly $6 million in prize money. NASA supplies the prizes but there are no guaranteed winners—teams must fully complete the tasks to claim the money. The inventors keep their intellectual property but NASA has the option to negotiate access to the technology, as do other public and private organizations.

For this challenge the teams will try to pilot an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) through multiple 30-minute missions, completing each course on time while detecting and avoiding other aircraft and dealing with problems like the loss of their communications link. Bonus points will be awarded if the aircraft can still operate after the GPS signal is interrupted or modified during the flight.

In this first phase of the contest the other aircraft will be cooperative, and will let, their location be known by broadcasting Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) messages. The judges will award additional bonus points if the competing UAV can detect and record the location of “uncooperative” aircraft operating without an ADSB signal.

In Phase 2 of the contest, which is expected to be worth $1 million to the winners, the teams’ aircraft must be able to detect and avoid planes without ADS-B equipment. That portion of the contest is planned for the fall of 2015.

Among those competing are Robota, a Dallas company that offers mapping UAVs and the Goose autopilot; and Craft and Theory, a North Dakota firm that provides turnkey UAVs. Another firm, CIP Drones of Seattle, will enter a fix-wing system.

There are six academic teams: two from Embry-Riddle, one each from the Daytona and Prescott campuses, squads from Oklahoma State and Ohio State Universities and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The ASU Advance  Autonomous Airborne Collision Avoidance Research Team (A4CART) from Arizona State University will be competing with the Mugin, a fix-wing UAV with a 3-meter wingspan.

The rules focus on safe aircraft operations instead of vehicle performance in an attempt to provide a level playing field for all competitors, regardless of their aircraft. The competition will be held at the Ohio/Indiana UAS Center & Test Complex at the Camp Atterbury Range, near Edinburgh, Ind.

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The Russian GLONASS system, which had appeared to be recovering from a series of organizational and technical problems in recent years, suffered two major disruptions during April.

The Russian GLONASS system, which had appeared to be recovering from a series of organizational and technical problems in recent years, suffered two major disruptions during April.

Beginning just past 1 a.m. Moscow time on April 2 (UTC+4) — 6 p.m. EDT on April 1 — a systemwide failure occurred. Outages continued for more than 10 hours, with the Russian GLONASS monitoring center showing satellites in unhealthy statuses: “failure” and “illegal ephemeris.” The event was attributed to an incorrect uploading of corrections to satellite ephermerides (orbital positions).

A staggered restoration of satellite health in the hours following the outage reflected the need for GLONASS system operators to wait until each satellite passed within range of ground stations on Russian territory to be reset.

Another disruption occurred on April 15, with eight satellites malfunctioning for about 30 minutes and another going off the air entirely. Russia’s Izvestia news quoted Nikolai Testoyedov, general director at JSC Reshetnev Information Satellite Systems, which manufactures the satellites, as saying that the glitches occurred while work was being carried out to update the system.

The problem marks another setback for the Russian GNSS program, which saw the system rebuilt and modernized over the past decade but has stumbled in recent years due to launch failures (including triple-satellite losses in July 2013 and December 2010) and organizational problems, including dismissal of high-ranking space officials in the wake of the launch failures and for charges of corruption.

In one case, the Proton rocket failure was blamed on a premature launch and in another on overfilling of the launcher’s fuel tanks. Successful launch of a GLONASS-M satellite on March 23 had seemed to indicate that the program had regained its footing.

Testoyedov has also announced that the long-awaited launch of the second next-generation satellite — GLONASS-K — would occur at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers have endorsed draft legislation to allow the country to set up a GLONASS monitoring facility in Nicaragua. This would add to the handful of monitoring stations, including sites in Brazil and Antarctica, outside the Russian territory, that are essential to managing a constellation in such situations. The U.S. Congress recently rebuffed a proposal to establish GLONASS monitoring stations in the United States.

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As engineers painstakingly work their way through tests of the first full operational capability (FOC) Galileo satellite at the European Space Agency’s European Space Research and Technology Center (ESA/ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, European space sources have acknowledged that the new-generation spacecraft’s maiden voyage will not occur until December 28, and even that date looks highly unlikely.

Late last year, Galileo program managers laid out an ambitious schedule of launches, including two dual-satellite launches this year. They wanted 14 to 18 FOC spacecraft in place by the end of next year so that they could declare the beginning of “early services” based on the system’s civil signals. But missing two planned 2013 launch dates will now cast further doubt on the prospects for achieving the latest milestones of the long-delayed program.

Meanwhile, European Union (EU) member states have begun independent testing of the Public Regulated Service (PRS) signal being broadcast by the four Galileo in-orbit validation (IOV) satellites.

Transmitted on two frequency bands, the encrypted PRS offers a highly accurate positioning and timing service, with access restricted to authorized users.

PRS access was initially considered for Galileo’s full operational capability (FOC) phase, but it has been enabled in 2013 in response to the strong interest of member states in this service, according to Miguel Manteiga Bautista, head of ESA’s Galileo Security Office. To allow early access to PRS during the current phase, the European Commission and ESA began the joint project ‘PRS Participants To IOV’ (PPTI) in July 2012.

“As a result, Belgium, France, Italy and the UK have now performed independent PRS acquisition and positioning tests. In parallel, ESA, through collaboration with Dutch and Italian authorities, is also conducting PRS fixed and mobile validation in several locations in the Netherlands and Italy,” said Manteiga.

ESA has made several tools available for the member states’ PRS testing, including test receivers and other qualification equipment. ESA also provided the know-how and expertise required to conduct these experimental campaigns.

ESA’s PRS Laboratory, based at ESTEC, was used to provide training, demonstrations, and sample data. The PRS tests have demonstrated a current autonomous positioning accuracy below 10 meters when in an optimal geometrical configuration.

“The PPTI project is still ongoing to test more advanced functionalities this coming autumn and to run the first aeronautical PRS tests in collaboration with the Dutch authorities,“ Manteiga said.

The project is the first step to ensure the use of the PRS service as soon as it is in full operation. It will be complemented by the PRS Pilot Projects, focused on PRS applications, which are currently being defines in a common effort among the EU member states, the European Commission, ESA, and the European GNSS Agency (GSA), which is in charge of Galileo security.

FOC SV Testing
ESA has begun acoustic tests, thermal vacuum, and other tests of the first two FOC satellites, which have arrived at ESTEC from manufacturer OHB in Bremen, Germany. Among the reported problematical aspects of the FOC satellites is the PRS signal transmission, which will operate at a higher power than the IOV spacecraft.

The initial tests will be followed by a System Compatibility Test Campaign in which the satellite is linked with Galileo Control Centers in Germany and Italy to transmit signals to ground user receivers as if it was already in orbit.

In July, ESA and the GSA invited companies to take part in a test campaign of Galileo chipsets to assess their readiness to support the reception and processing of Galileo signals in view of the planned declaration of early services.

The campaign will be undertaken by ESA between October 2013 and September 2014 and will consist of a series of laboratory and real-life signal tests making use of ESTEC facilities. Under GSA coordination, other product compatibility assessments may also be performed with the support of the European Joint Research Center in Ispra, Italy.

The tests will focus on the compatibility of the devices with the reception of Galileo Open Service Signals and their combined use with GPS and GLONASS, covering aspects such as time to first fix and accuracy. Depending on the capabilities of the devices, tests can be extended to cover assisted-GNSS performance.

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Japan’s and India’s regional and augmentation satellite navigation programs look forward to an active year, according to speakers at March’s Satellite Navigation Summit in Germany.

Japan’s and India’s regional and augmentation satellite navigation programs look forward to an active year, according to speakers at March’s Satellite Navigation Summit in Germany.

Mikio Aoki, director of the Japan’s Secretariat of Strategic Headquarters for Space Policy, said that a budget request would be submitted in April to fund construction of a four-satellite QZSS – Quasi-Zenith Satellite System – by the end of this decade, following a cabinet decision last September to accelerate development of the system as quickly as possible.

The first, and still the only, satellite in the QZSS constellation was launched in 2010.

GPS was used widely in connection with the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan a year ago, Aoki said. These include offshore wave meters that provide earlier tsunami alerts that the previous-generation shore-based gauges and the GPS reference network that measured the 5.3-meter east/southeast horizontal displacement and 1.2-meter vertical displacement caused by the earthquake.

He also described a cooperative effort between Honda and Google to quickly develop a navigable map showing road conditions in the affected area, which enabled vehicles bringing rescue and relief services to move through the area more efficiently.

Suresh Kibe, an India Space Research Organization consultant, spoke about India’s GPS augmentation system, GAGAN.

He said that the second GAGAN satellite would be launched into geostationary orbit at 82˚E later this year. It will join the first spacecraft launched last May, which is now operational from its orbital location at 55˚E.

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Compass/BeiDou-2, China’s GNSS program will launch 5 satellites this year to join the 11 already in orbit, according to Li Xing, a representative of the China Satellite Navigation Office. This will support a planned declaration of initial operational capability (IOC) for a regional system covering 84˚E to 160˚E and 55˚S to 55˚N, he said at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March.

The rapid development of the Chinese system was refelcted in the allocation of its own session during this year’s Summit, the most important GNSS policy gathering in Europe.

Compass/BeiDou-2, China’s GNSS program will launch 5 satellites this year to join the 11 already in orbit, according to Li Xing, a representative of the China Satellite Navigation Office. This will support a planned declaration of initial operational capability (IOC) for a regional system covering 84˚E to 160˚E and 55˚S to 55˚N, he said at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March.

The rapid development of the Chinese system was refelcted in the allocation of its own session during this year’s Summit, the most important GNSS policy gathering in Europe.

Professor Zhao Qile of Wuhan University’s GNSS research center said the positioning accuracy of 10–20 meters within that region available with the current constellation is expected to improve to 5 to 10 meters, based on a 5+5+4 (GEO, IGSO, MEO) configuration by the end of 2012.

Mao Gang, applications director for Unicore Communications Inc., a Beijing-based GNSS manufacturer, described progress that his and other companies in China have made in producing BeiDou-capable receivers in a variety of form factors, including modules and system-on-a-chip designs.

A navigation product line using the BeiDou B1 and GPS L1 civil signals provided real-time accuracy around five meters, Mao said, adding that his company had sold about 12,000 units of the receiver so far. A high precision version combining Compass B1/B2 and GPS L1/L2 signals provides two-meter single-point accuracy, he said.

A member of the audience asked when a complete interface control document (ICD) — including satellite orbits and clock offsets — would be publicly available so as to enable product designers and companies to manufacture BeiDou receivers. Mao’s presentation had made it clear that these details are available to numerous Chinese companies.

The session moderator, Lu Xiao-chun, from China’s National Time Service Center, replied that “our ICD is a test version. The data is not stable now. Maybe by the end of this year we may be able to release an ICD for message data and orbits,” she said.

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The European GNSS program expects to gain an additional €7 billion (US$9.1 billion) budget for 2014–2020 to support Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), a satellite-based augmentation system that currently provides differential corrections to GPS signals, according to Paul Flament, Galileo and EGNOS program manager for the European Commission. He spoke at the 2012 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit that ended on March 15.

The European GNSS program expects to gain an additional €7 billion (US$9.1 billion) budget for 2014–2020 to support Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), a satellite-based augmentation system that currently provides differential corrections to GPS signals, according to Paul Flament, Galileo and EGNOS program manager for the European Commission. He spoke at the 2012 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit that ended on March 15.

The Galileo program has already contracted for development and manufacturing of 26 operational satellites, including the two in-orbit validation (IOV) spacecraft launched last October and two more expected to go up from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, this coming September.

Javier Benedicto, head of the European Space Agency (ESA) Galileo Project Office, outlined an ambitious schedule to get the additional 22 satellites into orbit using a combination of Russian Soyuz rockets carrying two satellites each and modified Ariane 5 rockets with four spacecraft aboard.

ESA plans three Soyuz launches in 2013 (beginning the second quarter of the year), two Soyuz and one Ariane 5 launch in 2014; and two Ariane 5 launches in 2015.

Along the way, the program expects to declare an initial operational capability in 2014.

The program still needs to fund an additional four SVs to reach its planned 30-satellite constellation (27 + 3 spares).
Günter Hein, head of ESA’s EGNOS and GNSS Evolution Program Department, noted that testing had been completed the week before the Summit on the first IOVs and that signals are transmitting on all frequencies.

Hein said that an ESA Council decision was expected in November on continuation of the evolution programs. “It may sounds a little strange when we only have the first two-by-two satellites [IOVs plus prototypes GIOVE-A and -B] to be talking about the next generation,” he added, pointing out the long lead time needed to sustain and modernize GNSS systems.

Meanwhile, the European GNSS Agency (known by the acronym GSA), will open its new offices in Prague, Czech Republic, this September, from which the organization will continue its security and market development responsibilities for Galileo and EGNOS.

The security role has become more urgent following Europe’s decision last September establishing rules for access to Galileo’s Public Regulated Service (PRS) signal.

A session on “Galileo and Security,” reflecting the Summit’s overall theme, revealed that numerous practical challenges remain on how those rules will be implemented. These include questions about participation by non-European Union nations and international organizations, manufacturing of PRS equipment, differences in how public safety and security services are delivered (public or private sector) in various countries, different levels of technological maturity and institutional sophistication among user groups, and multinational and cross-border uses.

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GLONASS completed its long trek back to full operational capability with 24 operational satellites in the constellation last December, but Russia intends to keep pushing ahead with its GNSS, said Roscosmos official Sergey Revnivykh at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March.

GLONASS now has a 347 billion ruble (US$11.81 billion) budget approved through 2020, by which time the system is scheduled to have 24 satellites transmitting both the new CDMA and legacy FDMA signals.

GLONASS completed its long trek back to full operational capability with 24 operational satellites in the constellation last December, but Russia intends to keep pushing ahead with its GNSS, said Roscosmos official Sergey Revnivykh at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March.

GLONASS now has a 347 billion ruble (US$11.81 billion) budget approved through 2020, by which time the system is scheduled to have 24 satellites transmitting both the new CDMA and legacy FDMA signals.

According to Revnivykh, who directs the Satellite Navigation Department of the Mission Control Center for the Russian Federal Space Agency, the budget includes funds to complete the System of Differential Correction and Monitoring (SCDM), GLONASS’s satellite- and ground-based augmentation system, as well as some receiver acquisition and other projects.

However, most of the funds will go toward satellite development and manufacturing and upgrading the operational control segment.

Program officials expect to enhance GLONASS so as to operate with more than 24 satellites in the constellation almanac in the coming months, Revnivykh said, supporting plans to eventually expend the constellation to 30 SVs.

Later this year, the agency will launch its second next-generation GLONASS-K spacecraft.

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The United States GPS program is without doubt the elder statesman of GNSS, but it has had some close calls recently.

At the 2012 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March, a high-level Department of Transportation offical and the head of the Air Force GPS Directorate hailed continuing progress on the Global Positioning System’s third-generation satellite development and next-generation control segment (OCX), while apparently escaping — relatively unscathed — the dual perils of Congressional budget cuts and LightSquared interference.

The United States GPS program is without doubt the elder statesman of GNSS, but it has had some close calls recently.

At the 2012 Munich Satellite Navigation Summit in March, a high-level Department of Transportation offical and the head of the Air Force GPS Directorate hailed continuing progress on the Global Positioning System’s third-generation satellite development and next-generation control segment (OCX), while apparently escaping — relatively unscathed — the dual perils of Congressional budget cuts and LightSquared interference.

Represented by Deputy Assistant Secretary of Transportation Policy Joel Szabat and GPS Directorate commander Col. Bernie Gruber, the U.S. program heralded steady progress in maintaining its constellation while bringing new satellites on line.

Gruber told his Munich audience that the user equivalent range error (UERE) of the signals in space from the first two GPS Block IIF space vehicles (SVs) was 38 centimeters, compared to 86 centimeters for the 31-SV constellation as a whole. Block IIF space vehicles (SVs) 3 and 4 have been built and placed in storage, while numbers 5 through 8 are on the assembly line or undergoing integration and testing.

And, although the schedule for delivery of GPS III spacecraft may be stretched out, the GPS Non-flight Satellite Testbed — a prototype GPS III spacecraft also known as SV0 — had been powered up January 10.

Reflecting on the long-running debate over the LightSquared wireless broadband system that posed interference to GPS and other GNSS services in an adjacent band, Szabat acknowledged that “along the way we discovered many sectors — such as financial services — with critical infrastructure that was dependent on GPS in ways that we didn’t know and that they [the service providers] did not know.”

Later, Szabat said that the spread of jamming devices could affect the full implementation of the Federal Aviation Administration’s GPS-dependent NextGen program and that the government “can do a better job of detection” of interference sources. Referring to incidents of interference to GPS ground-based augmentation systems at Newark Airport, he admitted that it had taken months to track down the trucker whose “personal privacy device” was causing the problem.

Szabat also said that U.S. agencies were “at the very beginning of the process” of developing backup systems for GPS, which are needed in case of serious jamming or spoofing incidents.

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