The Soyuz launcher for Arianespace’s upcoming mission with the two Galileo satellites is taking shape at the Kourou Spaceport for a 27-March liftoff from French Guiana.
During activity in the Spaceport’s Soyuz Launcher Integration Building, the medium-lift workhorse began to assume its iconic form. The assembly of the Soyuz ST-B’s first two stages, plus its four first stage boosters, took place last week. Assembly takes place on a horizontal basis, in the Russian manner. Read more…
The seventh and eighth Galileo satellites arrived on 05-February to French Guiana, safely cocooned inside their air-conditioned containers inside an Air France Boeing 747, to be launched together by Soyuz on 27th March. Read more…
The Guiana Space Centre or, more commonly, Centre Spatial Guyanais (CSG) is a European spaceport to the northwest of Kourou in French Guiana. Operational since 1968, it is particularly suitable as a location for a spaceport as it fulfills the two major geographical requirements of such a site:
Galileo’s navigation messages have been recently stopped, in order to enable the migration of a new release for Galileo’s world-spanning ground mission segment (GMS).
Galileo Mission Segment Operators
Although the actual navigation signals will continue to be transmitted, the generation and uplink of the navigation message – which renews the contents of the signal – was interrupted this monday and will last for about five weeks. Read more…
Galileo’s fifth satellite (FOC), recently recovered from the wrong orbit, has been combined with three predecessors (IOV) to provide its first position fix.
Galileo fix using fifth satellite
Test receivers at ESA’s technical centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands, and at the Galileo In-Orbit Test station at Redu in Belgium received the signals at 12:48 GMT on 9 December from the quartet of satellites and fixed their horizontal positions to better than 2 m. This achievement is particularly significant because the fifth satellite is the first of a new design of 22 Galileos set to be launched over the next few years. Read more…
The modernisation, integration and expansion of rail networks in the European Union is opening exciting new possibilities for Europe’s global navigation satellite systems (E-GNSS), Galileo and EGNOS. Already used to offer non-safety services such as asset management and passenger information, an augmented GNSS linked to a range of sensors could provide signalling and train control services that meet stringent European safety standards. Read more…
Europe’s fifth Galileo satellite, one of two delivered into a wrong orbit by VS09 Soyuz-Fregat launcher in August, has transmitted its first navigation signal in space on Saturday 29 November 2014. It has reached its new target orbit and its navigation payload has been successfully switched on.
A detailed test campaign is under way now the satellite has reached a more suitable orbit for navigation purposes. Read more…