Europe's GPS competitor gets new life

By: Drivers.com staff
Date: 2008-05-16

Just a year ago, the European Union's top transport officials were lashing out at the eight companies building the European GPS satellite system, Galileo. They warned that delays were jeopardizing Europe's ambition of being a global technological player.

Now, it seems, Galileo is back on track. On Sunday, April 27, the Giove-B satellite was launched from Baikonur, the Russian space center in central Kazakhstan. It carried a passive hydrogen maser atomic clock which, the European Space Agency (ESA) says, is able to deliver "unprecedented stability performance" and will make the Galileo system more accurate than the U.S. GPS system. It is, says ESA, the most advanced atomic clock yet launched.

The ESA predicts that the Galileo system, working in conjunction with GPS, will be better in dealing with interference from tall buildings and will give deeper penetration for navigation in buildings. It will also be more accurate, ESA says.

So far, Europe has spent 1.6bn Euros (about $2.5bn) on the project and has approved an additional 3.4bn Euros ($5.3bn). This is expected to touch off one of the hottest bidding contests in EU history as aerospace contractors vie for the bonanza.

GIOVE-B started transmitting signals on Wednesday May 7. The signals are being used to test the viability and accuracy of the system and to test technologies that will be used as the remainder of the planned 30 Galileo system satellites are placed in orbit.

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