Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
At its November 23 meeting, the European Union’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECONFIN) approved €940 million in supplementary funding during fiscal year 2008 to support a public procurement of the Galileo system.
By Glen Gibbons
The GPS III modernization program came up short in the 2008 fiscal year (FY08) Department of Defense (DoD) appropriations bill signed into law by President Bush on November 13.
In passing H.R. 3222, Congress reduced the president’s request by $100 million to $487.23 million for the budgetary year ending next October 1.
Military GPS M-code user equipment (MUE) did better, however: gaining $63.2 million on Capitol Hill, over and above the $93.27 proposed in the administration’s budget, for a total of $156.47 million.
By Glen Gibbons
On Tuesday (November 13) European Union (EU) finance ministers will address the European Commision (EC) proposal for all-public funding of the Galileo program.
The proposal announced by the EC in September would use the 2007 and 2008 budgetary reserves for agriculture and administration — totaling about €2.5 billion — to augment a €1-billion Galileo allocation already in place. European transport ministers will take up the issue again in December.
By Glen Gibbons
The Department of Commerce has proposed legislation to boost the U.S. government’s space commerce activities. Specifically, the bill would reauthorize the Office of Space Commercialization (OSC), restore the office’s original name — Office of Space Commerce — and focus the office’s responsibilities to enable a robust and responsive U.S. commercial space industry.
By Glen Gibbons
“Growing Galileo” is the theme of a conference and exhibition taking place November 14–15 in Brussels, Belgium, that will highlight the work under way and planned for developing applications of Europe’s GNSS system.
By Glen Gibbons
The European Transport Council generally reaffirmed its commitment to the Galileo program in an October 2 meeting without resolving some underlying differences of how to finance the system following abandonment of the public-private partnership (PPP) approach earlier this year.
In its first look at the European Commission (EC) plan to complete the system by 2013 under a more traditional public procurement process, the council confirmed its intention “to take an integrated decision on the European GNSS before the end of the year.”
By Glen Gibbons
GLONASS has gotten “preliminary approval” to add code division multiple access (CDMA) signals to future satellites.
Since its initiation in the early 1980s, the Russian GNSS system has employed frequency division multiple access (FDMA) techniques in which the same code is used for the signals broadcast by the system, with individual spacecraft being distinguished from one another by a specific frequency allocation. Russia would almost certainly continue broadcasting FDMA signals on existing frequencies.
By Glen Gibbons
Selective Availability (SA), the contentious issue of degrading the open GPS civil to advantage military signals, is going away for good under the terms of a presidential decision announced September 18.
By Glen Gibbons
Operators of the world’s four GNSS systems and regional augmentation systems have laid the foundation for a multilateral environment in which to discuss issues of compatibility and interoperability.
By Inside GNSS
The United States and the European Union (EU) have agreed to use the multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) for a common GPS-Galileo signal for civilian use. In the future, this will enable combined GNSS receivers to track the GPS and Galileo signals with higher accuracy, even in challenging environments that include multipath, noise, and interference.
These signals will be implemented on the Galileo Open Service and the GPS IIIA new L1 civil signal known as L1C.
By Inside GNSS
A sea change appears to be taking place in Europe’s Galileo program as its political masters prepare to transform the struggling public-private partnership (PPP) into a more traditional institutional program wholly sponsored by the public sector.
That would move an additional €2.4 to €3 billion onto the public tax burden, but it might also represent the quickest route to completion of the GNSS project backed by the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
By Inside GNSS
President Bush’s appointment of retired U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett as Acting Deputy Secretary of Transportation has brought a new co-chairman to the U.S. Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Executive Committee (PNT EXCOM).
By Inside GNSS
Europe’s Galileo program continues to take small steps as it waits to see if it can get through an impasse between the European Commission (EC) and the consortium of companies seeking a concession to complete and operate the Galileo system.
By Inside GNSS
