Galileo! Galileo! Galileo good to go after six-week recovery effort The European Space Agency has announced that the sixth satellite in its Galileo satnav constellation has reached its desired orbit. The fifth and sixth Galileo birds flew last August, but a software problem with the launch craft's boosters saw both satellites land in sub-optimal orbits. The fifth satellite was nudged into a …
The rest of the article would seem to suggest that what it's actually reached is an orbit that sort of does well enough in a pinch but is nowhere near what was wanted.
The Galileo project is to rocket science[1] what the Keystone Kops are to law enforcement.
[1] Bugger all science value, bugger all commercial drive and now they can't get the things in the right place. Still the chair warming coterie of gravy train riders in Brussels feel more important, so it meets its core goal.
So the world and Europe in particular should be relying on the whim of Putin, Obama and successors for GPS and timing
You're assuming that the NSA or KGB doesn't already have a backdoor in all the Galileo satellites allowing it to turn them off, or transmit false data, when required?
We need a tinfoil hat icon...
<Ker-thwack!> (nail on head sound).
Good old-fashioned Gaullist dogma. Send a "screw you" message to the Americans, whatever the cost to you.
Terribly nice of us all to pay for this monumental bureaucratic white elephant while already having our pips squeezed due to massive fiscal incompetence by the EU.
"The Galileo project is to rocket science"
It never was about rocket science - and given this was a launch failure the save of birds 5&6 is a good thing.
I'm still unsure if the EU will switch off their birds should the USA tell them to. Last I heard Uncle Sam was threatening to shoot the things out of the sky should the EU refuse.
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This project has been a shambles from the start due to all the politics. They have plenty of related websites but I have been unable to find anything vaguely related to a schedule of service milestones with dates. It is funny because a related UK military comms satellite system featuring most of the same pan European companies was successfully deployed to a clear timetable on time and within budget.
True, but in fairness the military knew what they wanted, knew who to get in from, and how to implement their plan. Brussels on the other hand will have changed their mind about the spec 6 times, employed their half wit relatives as consultants, and blown most of the initial budget on junkets to Thailand and the other half on the then necessary penicillin.
Having worked for a company with a multi billion pound government contact (railway renewal) I can honestly say I have never seen people know less about what they want our need yet so willing to throw (other people's) money at a problem. It was so bad we ended up changing to a cost plus billing model because they changed their mind so frequently. Genuinely huge amounts of money were routinely wasted. I wonder if it would be the same if the shortfall came from their pension fund.
"Brussels on the other hand will have changed their mind about the spec 6 times"
The entire thing has been a work in progress.
This hasn't been due so much an EU issue as mission creep on the commercial side, however the accuracy requirements weren't achievable when the first designs hit the drawing boards. As such much of the delays have been down to proving the base chassis and then working on better iterations of the nav side until it met the specs.
So we have an 'independent' GPS and satellite system. Great. Now, do we need to set up a liaison office in NATO to co-ordinate Galileo European member country surveillance systems with the US NRO, given how in Europe we have abrogated all responsibility for defence to the USA anyway?
"The ESA says the new orbit mirrors that of Galileo Five, so that even though satellites orbit every 20 days compared to the rest of the constellation's ten, it now gets better coverage."
ESA spokesdrones need more cowbell. That quote should have ended: "Exactly as planned."
But: satellites don't form constellations. Constellations have to stay still over very long periods of time (or at least, long enough to draw some odd animal/human hybrid around them) or they aren't constellations. Satellites that stand still for any length of time end up as flaming chunks zooming over the Russian sky.
I think the word the ESA is groping for is "formation". That describes a group of things up in the sky that moves about, often so fast a guided missile can't catch them.
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