On this day, Nov. 3, in 1957, the Soviet Union launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome the first-ever living animal into orbit: a dog named Laika.

Laika, whose name means “barker”, was a 3-year-old mongrel stray wandering the streets of Moscow when she was picked up and taken to a secret Soviet space laboratory. Scientists selected strays because they had already learned to adapt to cold and harsh conditions. Read more…

The workshop on European Global Satellite System (GNSS) Research and Technology Development (RTD) will be organised by the European Commission in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European GNSS Agency (GSA).

This event is being held to consult stakeholders of the European GNSS community on RTD areas of potential interest to be funded under Horizon 2020 in the period 2015-2020. Read more…

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European Commission invite you to attend the third annual European Space Solutions conference schedule for 11 – 13 June in Prague.

Business leaders, research professionals, European officials and application developers will gather together to discuss the impact space has on the lives of people across Europe and around the globe. The three day conference will take place at the Prague Conference Centre and will be accompanied by the travelling European Space Expo, an interactive exhibition showcasing the many benefits of such EU space programmes as EGNOS and Galileo. Read more…

On 18 Dec 2013 Switzerland signed a cooperation agreement to participate in the Galileo and EGNOS programmes. Switzerland will now fully financially participate in the programmes, and will retroactively contribute €80 million for the period 2008-2013.

The agreement, signed in Brussels, also covers cooperation in areas such as security, export control, standards, certification and industrial cooperation. Read more…

After receiving a request in our Twitter account (@GalileoGNSS) by one of our followers, it has been decided to create a section within the blog to answer question raised on the social media that are considered of general interest. All these posts will be tagged as “Other” as they are not directly related with Galileo.

The first question comes from Will Martin (@willbermartin): “What do you expect a Wales-based space portal would bring to the UK?” Read more…

A leap second is a one-second adjustment that is occasionally applied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in order to keep its time of day close to the mean solar time.

UTC definition specifies that the difference between UTC and the astronomically observed version of Universal Time, called UT1, must not exceed 0.9 seconds. It further recommends that the preferred time to insert the leap second is at 23h 59m 59s UTC on either 31 December or 30 June. Read more…