14 ms·
Galileo navigation satellite system goes live
- olig15 10y agoThe high precision offered by Galileo was one of the reasons why the Pentagon rejected the system in the first place. There were fears that adversaries of NATO or of other allies could use it for military purposes. However, engineers have found a solution to that problem: should a serious crisis arise, the military can jam a certain part of the broadcasting spectrum. This would cut off civilian use, but still retain the functions that are reserved for allied military purposes. This seems like quite a big issue; If any of the EU states go to war, then planes and other civilian things relying on Galileo would stop working? Would they fall back to GPS?
- ghshephard 10y agoAny life safety system should definitely not be designed to rely on GPS/Galileo/Glonass - they are RF systems that can be jammed by anyone with any interest in doing so.
- dom0 10y agoPractically all life safety systems (boats, cars, climbing etc.) are based on radio.
- ghshephard 10y agoI certainly wouldn't want to trust my life to the integrity of a -130 dBm strength signal. Particularly if I'm traveling in a tunnel, or heck, deep forest.
- jimmies 10y agoI think, though, that if the alternative is to trust my instincts (which I don't have), then I'd rather trust that -130 dBm strength signal. I think that my instincts are the secondary factor when I get lost in the forest, not the first factor. If I have no reason to think the GPS system is deceiving me, I would trust it.
- arjie 10y agoWhat should they use instead for positioning?
- ghshephard 10y agoFor critical functions - combination of inertial navigation systems, mapping, radar, and plain old visual recognition of the location - after all, you need to have a sophisticated visual recognition system anyways to scan for all of the dynamic activity, why not extend it to be more broadly used? GPS is okay for gross navigation and tracking, just don't design any critical life-safety system to rely on it. I'd be very surprised if there were any boats/cars/planes that absolutely required GPS to be functioning for safe operation beyond the higher level navigation functions. Very disappointed as well.
- kiallmacinnes 10y agoAssuming, for example, commercial delivery drones were to use this, I can only imagine there would be some sort of notice of termination giving enough time to ground things.. Maybe that would put them out of service? If GPS 15m accuracy isn't enough, falling back won't help. Here's hoping sanity prevails and there's no sudden cutoff leading to things falling from the sky.
- greglindahl 10y agoHere's an example of prior notification and a disagreement about the effects of GPS jamming on popular model of small jet: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/08/embraer-gps-testing-no-problem-planes/85619022/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/06/08/embraer-gps-te...
- greglindahl 10y agoIt appears that most civilian receivers are going to use all of the various constellations at the same time. Here's an article from 2014 talking about production chipsets that do GPS/Galileo/Glonass/BeiDou. http://gpsworld.com/quad-constellation-receiver-gps-glonass-galileo-beidou/ http://gpsworld.com/quad-constellation-receiver-gps-glonass-...
- tuukkah 10y agoThis. The combination gives higher accuracy, faster fix, independence from a single political entity, and overall higher reliability by redundancy.
- TickleSteve 10y ago...and higher power usage. which is why being practical, you would use only one and fallback to the others on failure-to-fix.
- sangnoir 10y agoThis only applies to battery-powered GPS devices. Navigation systems on boats or aeroplanes can afford the higher power consumption and hence use multiple systems simultaneously. Additionally, even battery-powered systems can use multiple systems for a short period at first to get a faster lock, then fall-back to one to lower power consumption.
- cbhl 10y agoThis is already an issue with GPS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11856131
- dom0 10y ago> If any of the EU states go to war, then planes and other civilian things relying on Galileo would stop working? That's the point of projects like these, working together and relying so much on each other that European countries waging war against each other simply stops making sense.
- rzimmerman 10y agoThe article was a little unclear. Originally Galileo was supposed to use the same frequency band as GPS which would prevent the US from jamming it without also affecting GPS.
- jhayward 10y agoIt still does on the primary civilian signal. http://www.navipedia.net/index.php/GNSS_signal http://www.navipedia.net/index.php/GNSS_signal
- wyager 10y agoIt's obscene that the US has such control over foreign infrastructure installations in the name of "security". GPS accuracy limits and ITAR/COCOM GPS export restrictions are a farce anyway; even a third-world basement laboratory could construct a GPS receiver sufficiently fast and accurate for missile controls these days. The only thing these laws accomplish is to inconvenience civilians. I know some people in the high-altitude balloon community who are frequently frustrated by scared manufacturers not wanting to run afoul or ITAR and restricting GPS units so they can't even be used for balloons. Who knows what sort of cool location-based technology we could have today if the US hadn't intentionally held back civilian GPS for decades.
- Aloha 10y agoI hate to point this out, but we (the americans) paid for it, why shouldn't we have control over it? If you don't like it, you're always welcome to build your own.
- wyager 10y agoAmericans did not pay for Galileo. The EU paid for it. Americans did pay for GPS, which is why we should have full access to its capabilities as taxpayers.
- kuschku 10y agoThe EU did, and the US threatened to just shoot down the EU satellites unless they get the ability to turn off GALILEO.
- dispose13432 10y ago>The EU did, and the US threatened to just shoot down the EU satellites unless they get the ability to turn off GALILEO. In times of war.
- kuschku 10y agoNot just in times of "war between EU and US", but in times of "war between US and anyone else". This is not something that's in any way acceptable.
- mahyarm 10y agoCouldn't the other military jam the military GPS/Gallieo/etc bands too?
- nine_k 10y agoAs long as they have their own constellation that stays unjammed.
- krick 10y agoI'm not sure you got the point right. Originally Galileo was supposed to use frequencies very close to GPS. For technical reasons. But this would deprive USA from military advantage they have: they couldn't jam Galileo signals without jamming signals of their own system, GPS. (Maybe I should point out that GPS isn't something that "just works" for everyone: primitively speaking, USA can turn encryption on anytime, making these signals essentially useless for everyone but them.) It isn't about fairness or civilian convenience, it is about USA having an advantage in case of war. So, USA basically threatened to blow Galileo satellites up if EU goes with it. Unfortunately, they can, so EU backed off and changed the frequency spectrum of Galileo so that USA can retain their advantage. Yeah. So, no, Galileo users aren't supposed to fall back to anything. That's the point.
- aaronmdjones 10y agoMost commercial planes (and certainly almost every civilian airliner?) have an inertial reference system that is backed up by GPS. The inertial reference system is a physical unit that cannot be externally manipulated, but it has less accuracy. If the plane's flight management computer detects that the GPS significantly disagrees with the IRU, it will warn the pilots, and may automatically disable the GPS unit. Planes can also obtain position data via 2 VOR radials, or a single VOR-DME radial, or such. There are many options. To provide redundancy, there are usually 2 or 3 IRUs.
- arjie 10y agoChips that support multiple systems are fairly inexpensive. I picked a couple up on an indie gogo for $15 each. And it does GPS/Glonass/Beidou https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/navspark-arduino-compatible-with-gps-gnss-receiver--2#/ https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/navspark-arduino-compatib...
- neals 10y agoI like living in Europe most of the time. And I'm sure if we could get over a lot of petty, cultural, differences, we could build more amazing things and innovate at a much faster speed then we have been so far.
- Already__Taken 10y agoCouldn't you say that for just about anywhere?
- neals 10y agoNo. I don't think I'd like living just about anywhere, tbh.
- sehr 10y agoCould say that for everywhere, all at once!
- endisukaj 10y agoNot many places/regions are as advanced and have as a high quality of life and high percentage of educated citizens as Europe, so no. At this moment in time, not really.
- Already__Taken 10y agoOK maybe I was more glib than was fair but Syria, Israel and Iran are all full of smart people. Imagine if there were no cultural differences dividing the region. (I realize they're not neighbours.)
- endisukaj 10y agoWhat is "smart" anyway? Lots of countries are filled with untapped demographic potential. To tap into that resource you need a highly advanced school system and a high quality of life (so that you don't suffer from brain drain). Syria is of course a no-no, I don't know much about Iran to comment on their school system but I don't think the quality of life in Iran is as good as say, in Italy.
- nullnilvoid 10y agoEurope is really late to the party. GPS has been here for a long time. China's Bei Dou has been operational for a few years and is entering the 3rd generation.
- rzimmerman 10y agoThe first GPS satellite was launched almost 40(!) years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks#Block_I_satellites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks#Block_I_s...)
- AsyncAwait 10y agoThere's also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GLONASS
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jonknee 10y ago> Using GPS, private users can navigate with a precision of up to 15 meters (m). Galileo offers a precision of up to 4m for its fully open service. http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/ > Real-world data from the FAA show their high-quality GPS SPS receivers attaining better than 2.168 meter horizontal accuracy, 95% of the time.
- greglindahl 10y agoAnother thing to note on the accuracy front is that the US is about to start launching the next GPS IIIA generation, which has higher resolution than the current generation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_IIIA
- Avernar 10y agoWhile the features of IIIA are nice, it will be a while until all the existing ones are replaced by IIIA. The more immediate nice thing about the IIIA launches are that it adds more satellites that can transmit the L2 signal. Currently there are 18 healthy IIR-M and IIF satellites which can transmit L2. I believe you need about 24 minimum for full coverage. Once we have full L2 and we get civilian dual band L1/L2 receivers it will get rid of one of the biggest sources of inaccuracy which is ionospheric delay. A dual band L1/L2 receiver will be able to measure ionospheric delay directly. This means the delay calculated will be for that specific point instead of the area covered by a WAAS ground station. Plus you won't need a direct view of the WAAS satellites.
- dmurray 10y agoIt seems even better than that. My phone can tell me which side of a small road (2m accuracy) I am on 95% of the time. Maybe it uses a WiFi database and dead reckoning to improve on pure GPS.
- greglindahl 10y agoPhones generally use the WiFi database (plus cell tower info) to bootstrap GPS startup, but that's not useful for fine positioning.
- 0xcoffee 10y agoAre GPS systems just plug and play, or does the software also have to be compatible. e.g. Could I just replace the GPS receiver in my car to one that supports Galileo (even though I don't think any are on the market yet)?
- jsjohnst 10y agoNo, they aren't usually.
- IanCal 10y agoHowever there are some devices that are already capable of using Galileo. Recent Qualcomm chips and tomtom devices are I think.
- jsjohnst 10y agoYep, but I'm not aware of any automobiles using them yet. And I'm also not aware of any cars that allow you to swap out the navigation hardware either. Feel free to interject if you know of any!
- 0xcoffee 10y agoMy car's headunit just has a GPS input in the back, my GPS sits under the windshield.
- rzimmerman 10y agoGalileo's actual value has always been murky. It's use case has changed a lot over the years. Originally it was meant to be a navigation system free of GPS's Selective Availability "feature" that diluted precision for civilian use. The Clinton administration effectively killed SA (http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/ http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/) in 2000. Galileo was sold as a higher precision civilian alternative that was going to be commercially viable and make money. A few years later the US made improvements to the GPS ephemerides and effectively increased precision of GPS, making the benefits less obvious. The new block of GPS satellites offers even better precision and a lot of the Galileo features (like multiple civilian frequencies). It's honestly quite hard to compete with a free alternative that the US government throws billions of dollars at. Still, GPS can't hit sub-meter accuracy any time soon, so there's a real potential use case emerging for autonomous cars and aircraft. If you're excited and interested in Galileo it's really worth reading up on how GPS works and was built. The first satellite was launched almost forty years ago and it was operational in the 1980s. It's truly one of the coolest and most amazing things made by humans.
- CalChris 10y ago> Still, GPS can't hit sub-meter accuracy any time soon GPS has had sub-millimeter survey grade accuracy for quite some time. However, these require post-processing which takes maybe a day, read that as not realtime. WAAS+GPS currently gives 2-3 meters.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago>sub-millimeter survey grade accuracy Could you provide some links to read? I just can't imagine how it's possible.
- CalChris 10y agohttp://www.gpstk.org/foswiki/pub/Documentation/GPSTkPublications/precision-gps-hhstt-ion-gnss-2006.pdf http://www.gpstk.org/foswiki/pub/Documentation/GPSTkPublicat... I think I overstated but still it is possible. Millimeter survey grade is commercial.
- guelo 10y agoWith the new Trump/Putin alliance NATO will be threatened. It makes sense for Europe to develop independent military infrastructure and to ramp up military spending.
- lorenzhs 10y agoGalileo is a civilian project, though. It has features that are limited to police, border security, military, etc but it's an EU project. The EU doesn't have an army (its member states do, but the EU doesn't).
- kuschku 10y agoThe EU does have a coast and border guard, though, which is a paneuropean military entity.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jaakl 10y agoCan you be more specific? I live few kilometers from EU outer border with a hostile country, but have never seen or heard of such paneuropen guards. AFAIK paneuropean is only a law which requires every country to guard all their borders, and only non-national military we have is NATO.
- dglancy 10y agoFrontex (http://frontex.europa.eu http://frontex.europa.eu), its more of a co-ordination agency, but it does I believe have its own staff on secondment to it.
- kuschku 10y agoIt was established in July 2016 to replace Frontex and national border guards, as response to the refugee crisis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Border_and_Coast_Guard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Border_and_Coast_Guar...
- phkahler 10y agoWhere do they get off claiming Ariane 5 has a perfect record? It's explosion is one of the classic stories of software failure.
- effie 10y agoIndeed, I was surprised to read that too. Probably mistake on author's part.
- mrb 10y agoThis 1996 failure was not a "production" flight but a "test" flight (the very first test flight in fact). I guess the article implicitly claims all "production" flights were flawless. But that too would be an overstatement. There was a second (and last) failure in 2002 for the first test of the ECA configuration of Ariane 5. (ECA, Évolution Cryotechnique type A, is an improved Vulcain 2 first-stage engine with a longer nozzle with a more efficient flow cycle and denser propellant ratio.) All ~75 launches since 2002 have been flawless.
- nayuki 10y agoThe article contained a strange word "eparated". It took me a few seconds to realize it meant "separated". I tried Googling the word to check how good its spelling correction was - but instead it came back with no correction and real results about automobiles. It seems to have parsed the word as "EPA rated", alluding to fuel efficiency.
- nazca 10y agoAny guess when devices will start using Galileo? I'm thinking about dropping some coin in a Garmin Fish Finder & chartplotter for my boat. Currently sell models that use GPS & GLONASS.
- IanCal 10y agoThere are some already capable, but they'll need a firmware upgrade. Recent Qualcomm chips for phones do at least.
- bradhe 10y agoNow that there's a second player in this world, maybe we can standardize the hardware? Great the satellites are online...but how many devices have been manufactured with the requisite hardware? Also wonder how many devices this network can support. I'm sure there is sufficient capacity but I'm just curious how the capacity is calculated!
- alykhalid 10y agoGalileo isn't second, its 4th or 5th in the market. Depending on how you read the table on this page [1]. >Also wonder how many devices this network can support. I'm sure there is sufficient capacity but I'm just curious how the capacity is calculated! Satellite navigation systems broadcast signals on a specific frequency. Anyone listening, should be able to pick up the signal. Therefore I assume infinite capacity. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation
- cm2187 10y agoDo we know when Galileo-compatible chips are expected to be deployed widely?