Second Galileo satellite delayed 'til 2008
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Spectrum placeholder held up by Russian rocketry Hotly-debated European sat nav project Galileo has suffered a technical delay in addition to its budgetary and political woes.â¦
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Intelsat Ltd. has regained communications with a satellite that it lost track of last weekend, but engineers do not know if they will be able to fully restore service. -The Washington Post
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Galileo, once billed as a potential rival to the US Department of Defense's GPS system, is now facing serious issues following disagreements over the development of the system by eight companies tasked with its build-out.
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NASA Thursday postponed yet again the launch date for its Atlantis shuttle mission to deliver a European space laboratory to an orbiting station, pushing it back by a week to January 10.
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A Nasa mission to study the phenomenon known as the northern lights has been delayed by 24 hours.
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Europe's proposed multibillion-dollar Galileo satellite navigation project could be salvaged with the help of unspent EU funds and without additional taxpayer money, the European Commission said Wednesday.
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Eurocrats not quite as enthusiastic US negotiators in Brussels expect to reach agreement with the European Union within a week regarding cooperative use of the American Global Positioning System (GPS) and the EU's proposed Galileo sat-nav constellations.â¦
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In the next few weeks the twin Mars rovers will be out of touch with Earth when the Sun lines up to block communications. Daily operations will be taken over by longer-term instructions without radio links between the two planets.
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EU governments agreed Friday that the troubled Galileo satellite navigation network needs a public bailout if what was supposed to be a showcase for Europe&#39;s technological prowess is to get off the ground.
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Satellite operator Intelsat Ltd. has  lost a satellite following an unexpected electrical power  problem less than two months after electrical problems ruined  another satellite.
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NASA on Monday announced it was delaying until Thursday the launch of the space probe Dawn on its eight-year mission aimed at unlocking the mysteries of the origins of our solar system.
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Launch of NASA&#39;s Swift spacecraft has been delayed at least 24 hours due to a concern with Range Command-Receiver Decoder equipment on the launch vehicle.
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The European Space Agency says it has awarded a contract to a British satellite firm to help safeguard frequencies allotted to the Galileo satellite navigation system.
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(InfoWorld) - South Korea has made good on a promise to cooperate with the European Union on the latter'sÂ Galileo satellite navigation system. The two signed an agreement in Helsinki Monday that opens the door to South Korea's active participation in the program. The Asian nation could work with the EU on several areas including scientific research and training, industrial cooperation, trade and market development, standards, certification, and regulatory measures, the two parties said in a statement. Galileo is a EU-backed satellite navigation system that will provide a higher grade of service than the U.S. government's GPS (global positioning system). The EU has developed the system for commercial applications, unlike GPS which was developed primarily for military applications and doesn't come with any guarantee of continued availability for civilian use. Galileo will transmit signals that are compatible with GPS. A number of non-EU nations have signed on to the program. Cooperation agreements have been concluded with China, Israel, the U.S., Ukraine, India, and Morocco and others are in preparation, the EC said in June. Â
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'Indispensable strategic tool' Galileo, the rolling European satnav project fracas, has hit the headlines again as parliamentarians in Brussels demand extra funds for the coming year.â¦
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Europe's proposed satellite-navigation system is in danger of running into further delays and cost overruns.
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(InfoWorld) - Satellite navigation boxes using the GPS (global positioning system) are no longer the preserve of luxury car owners in Europe. Now you see them in the humblest vehicles on the Continent's highways. That's part of the reason why the European Commission Wednesday proposed taking on the entire â¬3.4 billion ($4.7 billion) cost of creatingÂ Galileo, Europe's answer to GPS, which is based in the U.S. "Do consumers really want this product? To answer that you must ask why consumers like GPS so much," said transport commissioner Jacques Barrot at a press conference Wednesday. "Consumers are answering the question by buying more and more GPSes," he said. "Galileo will make money, and with the E.U. as its owner, it will generate income for the E.U. budget." Barrot's confidence wasn't shared earlier this year byÂ the companies picked to share the cost and benefitsÂ of building the 30-strong constellation of satellites. Unsure of the costs and unconvinced of Galileo's eventual commercial potential, theÂ companies dragged their feetÂ to a point in June where the Commission abandoned the partnership with the private sector. Under the original plan, public money was supposed to pay for the first four satellites and then the private consortium of companies building the satellites were to pay for two-thirds of the 26 remaining satellites. This amounted to a private sector cost of â¬2.4 billion. The companies -- AENA, Alcatel-Lucent, EADS, Finmeccanica, Hispasat, Inmarsat, TeleOp, and Thales -- were to recoup their investment costs by then operating the satellites and collecting fees once they were in operation. Barrot said Wednesday that the Commission wants the â¬2.4 billion to be paid for out of European Union funds. The E.U. has already committed â¬1 billion to the project. He said that he initially wanted the 27 member states of the E.U. to fill the funding gap through payments directly to the European Space Agency (ESA). But as 10 countries in the E.U. aren't members of the ESA this was dismissed, leaving the E.U. budget as the only possibility for ensuring that the project is financed. With the E.U. as the sole owner of Galileo, it will still need companies from a variety of industries to build the system's infrastructure, Barrot said. Astrium (EADS group) and Thales Alenia Space (Thales and Finmeccanica groups) approached the ESA for some of this work recently, the commissioner said. "Galileo is extremely important for the strategic autonomy of Europe. We can't let this opportunity to manage the know-how in this advanced technology pass," Barrot said. Transportation ministers of the E.U. member states will meet in Luxembourg on Oct. 2 to debate the Commission's proposal. Countries with most to gain from the project include France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. They are believed to support the Commission. However, others including the U.K. and the Netherlands, remain to be convinced that there is a real need for a European GPS. Separately, U.S. president George W. Bush said in a statement issued by the U.S. mission to the E.U. Wednesday, that he will stop the GPS signal from being interrupted or degraded by military purposes. One of the main justifications for launching Galileo was that GPS is ultimately at the mercy of the U.S. Department of Defense, and could be jammed for strategic reasons, potentially endangering private users' lives. Galileo is intended to be purely for civilian use. However, the U.S. recently has taken steps to assure GPS users that they can count on the system. "President George W. Bush has accepted a recommendation to end procurement of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that have the capability to intentionally degrade the accuracy of civil signals," the White House press secretary said in a statement Tuesday. Although the U.S. stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000, this new action will result in the removal of "Selective Availability" capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide. This decision reflects the nation's commitment to GPS users that this free global utility can be counted on to support peaceful civil activities around the world, the statement said.