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Galileo Lift-Off
01 Jan 2006
The first test satellite for the European Union's Galileo civil navigation system, designed to complement US GPS and Russian Glonass networks, was launched via a Russian Soyuz rocket from Baikonour, Kazakhstan on 28 December.
The UK-built 600kg satellite was placed in an orbit at 23,000km and will be followed by a second test unit. Thereafter four working satellites will be launched, marking the first stage towards a final constellation of 30, comprising 27 operational ones and three reserves.
The complete network is expected to be operational in 2008 and provide continuous positional accuracies of around 1m.
Following an EU-US agreement in June 2004, full interoperability and compatibility between Galileo and GPS is promised. According to EU sources, this will provide a significant boost to the worldwide GNSS market with estimated volumes of 3 billion receivers and revenues of around ?275bn per year by 2020. It could also lead to the creation of more than 140,000 jobs by 2013. But the costly ?3.8bn venture is not without its critics, some describing it as the 'common agricultural policy of the sky'.
