Galileo – The European Union’s Answer To America’s Global Positioning System
1 Nov 2011On October 21st of this year, two new European Union satellites were launched into space. These satellites, mark Europe’s attempt to create their own Global Positioning Satellite system. Planned over ten years ago, the project has seen its share of delays. European Union countries wanted to develop a similar system to the United States Global Positioning System, that would not have to rely on a system controlled by the US Government. Interestingly enough, Russia (Glonass) and China (Baidu) are the only other two nations at this time with their own GPS systems in place.
Pretty cool capabilities. The atomic clocks on these satellite systems are extremely accurate, losing plus or minus one second every 3 Million years! The GPS tracking accuracy level of the Galileo system is about one meter. Their are plans to offer three levels of service; a free service for the general public, a service for businesses which offers encrypted data and even better tracking accuracy levels, and finally a critical level of service option that will be used for safety of life in such situations as search and rescue.
The Galileo satellite system is expected to be functional by 2014 and fully functional by 2020, when additional service will be released.
