Galileo 7 & 8 Soyuz launch overview [Video]
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Author Archives: Galileo GNSS
Sixth Galileo satellite in corrected orbit
The sixth Galileo satellite has now entered its corrected target orbit, which will allow detailed testing to assess the performance of its navigation payload.
Launched with the fifth Galileo last August, its initial elongated orbit saw it travelling as high as 25900 km above Earth and down to a low point of 13713 km, confusing the Earth sensor used to point its navigation antennas at the ground. Read more…
Next Galileo launch preparation – Soyuz Flight VS11
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…
Galileo satellites arrival to Kourou Spaceport
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…
Guiana Space Centre – The site
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:
- it is near the equator, so that less energy is required to maneuver a spacecraft into an equatorial, geostationary orbit
- it has open sea to the east, so that lower stages of rockets and debris from launch failures cannot fall on human habitations.
Galileo service interruption for Ground Segment Upgrade
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…
First position fix with Galileo satellite-5
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…