Peter Gutierrez Archives - Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design

March 27, 2020

Carlo des Dorides Departs from Longtime Post as GSA Executive Director

“Galileo is a true European success story,
and I am proud if in a small way I have contributed to building Europe with it.”

European Union space mainstay Carlo des Dorides, Executive Director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) since 2011, retired from this post at the end of January.  He was scheduled to speak at the 12th EU Space Conference in Brussels that month, but had to skip out when he was called to a special budget session of the European Parliament. It would have been his last appearance in a public forum as GSA chief. Inside GNSS met with him in Brussels to talk and to say farewell.

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By Peter Gutierrez
February 5, 2020

European Space Agency Looks at 2020

European Space Agency (ESA) top brass welcomed journalists to the Agency’s headquarters in Paris for its annual New Year’s press launch. On hand was the Director General as well as ESA’s Galileo guru Paul Verhoef, who spoke one-on-one with Inside GNSS.

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By Peter Gutierrez
March 14, 2019

European Space Sector Gets Defensive

Officials representing the European Union are now publicly advancing the use of EU space assets, including the Galileo satellite-based navigation system, for military purposes. Galileo has traditionally been touted as a purely civil, purely nonmilitary system, but times and circumstances are changing.

The theme of the EU Space Week session Security and Defense was established by the introductory text that appeared in the event’s program: “The development of the European space sector has, from the outset, been linked to security, either that of the Member States or the EU itself.”

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By Peter Gutierrez
February 19, 2019

GNSS Workaround for a Galileo-less Britain

A recent paper published in The Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, by Lasisi Salami Lawal of Nigeria’s Federal University of Technology, and Chris Reginald Chatwin of the University of Sussex, argues that the United Kingdom could launch a payload on a national military communications satellite to provide navigation overlay services for the United Kingdom territory, surrounding waters and neighboring ally countries.

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By Peter Gutierrez
February 15, 2019

Zheng Yao: Currents, Influence and Due Diligence

Zheng Yao was born in Beijing and grew up in a house full of books. His parents provided the foundation but didn’t push him in a particular direction. When he was a teenager, a video game changed his course forever. Zheng found his own way in life, ultimately distinguishing himself as an academician, a top-flight GNSS engineer, and as a son, husband and father.

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By Peter Gutierrez
July 28, 2017

Answering the Call for a GNSS Back-up

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.

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By Peter Gutierrez
November 18, 2013

Questions in Wake of New Galileo Delay

Some of the specific technical issues behind the latest delay for Galileo’s first full operational capability (FOC) satellites have already been reported. The story, as it is told, generally starts with a late navigation payload delivery by British firm Surrey Satellite Technology to the German prime contractor, OHB. Next, OHB ran into issues with the payload and the platform, further stretching out the timeline.

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By Peter Gutierrez
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