Galileo launch of four new birdies this evening

[Pheasant Surprise]

Ariane 5 rocket launch tonight at 18:36 UK time from Kourou space centre in French Guiana will (with the right amount of luck) place four more satellites into orbit for the Galileo constellation.

After they have gone through their validation phase typically lasting about 2 months they will be brought into 'full operation' and the Galileo constellation will hit 22 satellites, not too far from 100% coverage with the full service number of satellites is 24. That is planned to be achieved by summer next year with the final launch of 4 more birds (2 will be in orbit "spares").

I was just reading tonight that ESA plans to bring out a new Precision Point Positioning (PPP) service using Galileo for free in 2020 that will allow 10cm accuracy. Sounds good!

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Live webcast of launch...

https://spaceflightnow.com/2017/12/12/va-240-mission-status-center/

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Four more Galileo satellites were sucessfully launched on Wednesday morning. Constellation is nearing completion now.

https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-quartet-successfully-launched-from-kourou

Hopefully the last 4 launched back in December should finish their 6-7 month commissioning in the next week or two. They’re now showing on the almanac, so should be useable shortly.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Showing the completeness of the constellation.

There are 24 "slots" in total across 3 planes. There will be a further 6 spare satellites. The ones in orange are a fudge up, due to being accidentally launched into the wrong orbit, but they are very sloooowly being brought back into a place where they can once again be put to use.

The numbers in the circles are their space vehicle IDs. These are the "E" satellite numbers that your GNSS receiver tracks.

After the December 2017 launch. New satellites are shown in blue in plane A. These should be coming online in the next week or two with luck:

After Wednesday's launch. New satellites shown in blue in plane B:

 

[FrallyWally]

This is very interesting. will older type of ag recivers work against Galileo hardware wise or will there be an need for uppgrade?

 

[Brisel]

Do the clocks work on these? Half them failed on the earlier ones!

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

This is very interesting. will older type of ag recivers work against Galileo hardware wise or will there be an need for uppgrade?

Depends really on the age of the receivers.

Some of the earliest receivers were simply GPS only. Then the bulk of the receivers available from about 2010 perhaps some earlier, have been dual constellation, able to receive both GPS and GLONASS.

Finally most decent quality receivers made since about 2013/14 should have hardware capable of receiving all four now main global constellations including Galileo and BeiDou, although they may need an unlock or firmware update in order to do so.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Do the clocks work on these? Half them failed on the earlier ones!

There was a story about that last year. Although they only need one clock to work, they apparently carry four independant clocks on board each satellite, two each of rubidium and hydrogen. They tracked the faults down on each type and understand they’ve got mitigations in place. See news article

As with GPS and GLONASS they will replace and renew the constellation over time. Each satellite has a lifespan of about 12 years.

GPS is now on its 5th generation or block of satellites, since they were first launched.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

After the December 2017 launch. New satellites are shown in blue in plane A. These should be coming online in the next week or two with luck:

Earlier yesterday three of the four satellites launched last December; numbered E25, E27 and E31, appear* to have transitioned from in-orbit commissioning activities to 'satellite first time available' - that is the satellites are sending out healthy signal-in-space (SIS) - the birdies are showing up as "healthy" in the almanac. The remaining satellite of that launch batch; E21, is about two weeks behind the others in its in-orbit commissioning.

In about a fortnight or so they should transition to 'satellite first time usable' - the satellites will be sending out proper navigation signals and fully contributing to the overall service.

By end of the month, the constellation of 18 (14 working) should be bolstered to 22 (18 working).

* the official Notice Advisory to Galileo Users (NAGU) not yet released, but the satellites are marked “healthy” and are being tracked by receiver

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Well, well. The NAGUs all came through a little while ago!

So satellites E25, E27 and E31 are all now fully useable / functional. One left to go from this batch

 

[Robt]

Don’t you feel a little lonely by asking and answering on your own thread ?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Oh I know it’s tragic isn’t it. I’ve become a Galileo anorak. How sad.

 

[Zebbedee]

I,m reading it but no idea what it means

 

[Still Farming]

More space pollution ?

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I,m reading it but no idea what it means

Sorry for using any jargon. Just news of the new satellites that are being launched into orbit to finish building out the Galileo constellation.

It’s a good thing - very basically the more satellites your receiver sees, the faster and more accurately it can get a fix. Plus once the constellation is in “Full Operation” in 2020 they will release some niceities like free HA (High Accuracy) positioning.

So paying for certain correction services like RTX Rangepoint becomes redundant.

“We” as in the the UK played a big part in building it, through companies like Surrey Satellite Technology (SSTL). A shame we may not be involved in future subsequent developments of the program.

 

[Zebbedee]

Free correction signals I can understand,,,,,thanks it’s all very interesting even if I only partly understand it all cheers

 

[Still Farming]

Elon Musk's space sculpture and rocket to visit the Sun and see what that like launched recently also.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Four more Galileo satellites were sucessfully launched on Wednesday morning. Constellation is nearing completion now.

https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-quartet-successfully-launched-from-kourou

View attachment 697934

Hopefully the last 4 launched back in December should finish their 6-7 month commissioning in the next week or two. They’re now showing on the almanac, so should be useable shortly.

Of the four Galileo satellites that were launched last July, two just went live this morning.

So with two remaining satellites from the same launch left to finish their commissioning, hopefully any time soon, the Galileo constellation will be complete and go to “fully operational capability” or FOC.

Good stuff

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

For the first time ever....more European birds visible and useable than Russian birds

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

E13 (GSAT0220) satellite has just been announced as live or “USABINIT” in Galileo speak (Initially Useable).

So from the last launch, satellites E13, E33 and E36 are now live. E15 is the last left to finish commissioning, then the constellation is fully operational.

Edit - and the last one, E15 has gone live now too.

So that’s a full house!