GIOVE-A liftoff

GIOVE or Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element, is the name for two satellites to test technology in orbit for Galileo.

Giove is the Italian word for “Jupiter”. The name was chosen as a tribute to Galileo Galilei, who discovered the first four natural satellites of Jupiter, and later discovered that they could be used as a universal clock to obtain the longitude of a point on the Earth’s surface.

The GIOVE satellites are operated by the GIOVE Mission (GIOVE-M) segment in the frame of the risk mitigation for the In Orbit Validation (IOV) of the Galileo positioning system. Read more…