Satellite News

Researchers at the University of Bath have gained new insights into the mechanisms of the Northern Lights, providing an opportunity to develop better satellite technology that can negate outages caused by this natural phenomenon.

Geoscience Australia, an agency of the Commonwealth of Australia, and Lockheed Martin have entered into a collaborative research project to show how augmenting signals from multiple GNSS constellations can enhance positioning, navigation, and timing for a range of applications.

Europe’s own Galileo satellite navigation system has begun operating, with the satellites in space delivering positioning, navigation and timing information to users around the globe. Several contracts regarding the system’s operation have been signed.

French space agency CNES and Thales Alenia Space conducted a demonstration under real conditions in July 2016 that will bring significant new evolutions to the satellite navigation market, the company said. The demonstration was designed to validate the performance of Precise Point Positioning (PPP), a new technology operated via the EGNOS satnav augmentation service.

The University of Nottingham and Royal Norwegian Naval Academy (RNoNA) are investigating how to prevent shipping Global Positioning Signals (GPS) being jammed in potential cyberattacks that may cause vessels to go off course and collide or run aground.

Iridium Communications Inc. announced the official launch of Satellite Time and Location (STL), an alternative or companion to traditional location-based technologies, and declared it ready for use. For the first time, end users now have access to accurate and resilient position, navigation and timing (PNT) technology that works anywhere on the planet, even indoors.

Having completed their checks in space, two more of Europe’s Galileo satellites are now fully operational, broadcasting navigation signals and, from today, relaying search and rescue messages from across the globe.

Inmarsat and the European Space Agency (ESA) have announced the successful completion of Phase 1 of ESA’s Iris Precursor; the ‘Final Design Review’ to validate the architecture & system design, and the safety & security of ESA’s Iris programme.