Hello Galileo, European GPS system to go live in 2010

By on Nov 13, 2009 at 6:44 PM
Services November 13, 2009

Screen shot 2009-11-13 at 10.33.01 AM

The Galileo navigation satellite project has been in the works for some time now in Europe, spearheaded mainly by the drive to mitigate reliance on U.S. foreign satellite guidance systems. Galileo will, in theory, “offer greater accuracy — down to a meter and less; and greater penetration — in urban centers, inside buildings, and under trees; and a faster fix” when compared to the U.S. run GPS satellites. The new system is set to be offered with a tiered service model, five tiers to be exact, and will also come with an integrity check of sorts, warning users if and when their reported location may not be exactly bang on. Any good news for those of us stateside? Sure is. The U.S. and EU have agreed to make both the GPS and Galileo systems interoperable; newer navigation hardware will be able to position you using either constellation as well as benefit from any future improvements to the United States’ system. Europe started launching Galileo ‘sputniks’ into orbit in December of 2005 and the main constellation is set to go live sometime in 2010. Here’s to hoping that our beloved smartphones are updated with the new technology sooner rather than later.

Read

Tags:
, , , , , ,
10 Comments

Related Articles

  • warhed

    NNNNIIIIICCCCCEEEEEE!!! better technology for EVERYONE! (that can afford it)

  • Jon

    “Modernized” GPS has the exact same benefits as Galileo with the new L2C and L5 signals, without having to pay. I there’s several satellites with L2C already flying. Galileo is pretty much Europe’s subsidy to their satellite industry, once they stopped being able to afford more spy satellites.

  • phonejunkie30

    @Boy,

    what does this have to do with the topic moron

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone).

  • Dio

    Nah, its you that sucks.

  • Fireball

    Well since your name is “Boy” you may not have lived long enough for anyone to tell you that sometimes we shouldn’t go with our feelings. But thanks for trying to be a big kid and contribute. Maybe next time it will work out for you a little better. Until then just sit back with your hot cocoa and your blankie and leave the adult conversations to the grown up’s.

  • Steve

    Tiered service. Let me get this straight,. we (US tax payer) offer the world free GPS. And if we want to use their (European) system we have to pay.

    • Di

      R u sure your GPS is free for other counties?

    • Lobo

      That is how it most often work. If you offer a better service then you can charge for it.

    • Eric

      No that’s not what that means. Tiered service means there will be different levels of accuracy and security. We have that today with the U.S. system. Currently, everyone in the world uses the same GPS satellites. But if the U.S. military wanted to, they could turn off GPS for everyone but themselves. Because there is a service tier for the military and a service tier for consumers.

      Up until a few years ago the military had actually dumbed down the accuracy for the consumer tier, so it wasn’t quite as accurate as for the military.

  • JohnH

    Andres, did you fully read the original article? They plan to start launching the full set of satellites in 2010, with the network being operational in 2013. The currently operating satellites (2 of them) are “demo” models.

blog comments powered by Disqus