THE EUROPEAN Commission (EC), European Space Agency (ESA) and Eurocontrol have launched a five-year European Satellite Navigation Action Programme, with an initial budget of about $200 million.
Europe wants to take ultimate control of satellite navigation services within its own airspace and not rely on military-based US global-positioning-system (GPS) and Russian GLONASS satellites, the organisations say.
Included in the plan are the Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) 1 and 2. The main objective of the GNSS 1 is to develop technologies to ensure that the GPS and GLONASS are available for civil use, on a reliable basis with the required precision.
The GNSS 1 will use two Inmarsat 3 satellites over the Atlantic and Indian oceans, each equipped with navigation payloads. The first of five planned Inmarsat 3s will be launched in 1996.
The satellites will enable aircraft, ships and other vehicles to determine their positions with a greater precision than will be possible using GPS or GLONASS data alone. Civil users of these systems receive artificially degraded data, deviating by about 100m.
The GNSS 2 will prepare for a second-generation satellite navigation and positioning system, to be deployed between 2005 and 2020, and which would be controlled internationally.
Source: Flight International
