Space blog - GIOVE-A

Competition to curb Galileo costs and timescales

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 14:28:03 +0100

SSTL’s Group Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting stated in a press release today that he believes the increased competition resulting from the June proposal by the European Commission to fund the Galileo satellite navigation system through the public sector will reduce the cost and risk involved.

"The increased competition will have significant benefits"

”The increased competition will have significant benefits,” stated SSTL’s Group Executive Chairman, Sir Martin Sweeting. “The public sector will soon be in a position to place contracts that give the European taxpayer better value for money and step up the pace of delivering the system”.

SSTL aims to support the European Commission and European Space Agency (ESA) by building on its experience gained through the successful GIOVE-A mission, to provide best value in the operational phase of Galileo. GIOVE-A was developed under a €28M contract signed with ESA in the second half of 2003. The mission’s primary aim was to broadcast Galileo signals from space so that Europe could claim the frequencies filed for Galileo with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The satellite was designed, built, tested and launched before the end of 2005 – on-time and on-budget. GIOVE-A has transmitted Galileo signals for over 18 months and remains the only Galileo spacecraft in operation. Following the success of GIOVE-A, ESA placed a further contract with SSTL in March 2007 for a second satellite named GIOVE-A2.

Sir Martin added:

“It’s clear that a second source of operational satellites is needed, both to provide healthy competition and to reduce risk to the schedule of the Galileo system. SSTL has begun discussions with other key European suppliers, with the aim of forming a team capable of supplying a significant portion of Galileo whilst maintaining the winning formula employed on GIOVE-A. We expect these discussions to be finalised in October, in time to provide the public sector with a much needed competitive option”.

Galileo is a joint initiative between ESA and the European Commission. When fully deployed in the early years of the next decade, it will be the first non-military positioning system to offer global coverage.

3 aerospace awards for SSTL

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 12:45:00 +0100

SSTL achievements have been recognised in by three prestigious awards from the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS). The RAeS awards are considered the most prestigious and long-standing awards in global aerospace honouring achievement, innovation and excellence

The team responsible for the building and delivery of the Galileo test satellite, GIOVE-A, received the Team Silver Award. This was accompanied by the Geoffrey Pardoe Space Award for an exceptional contribution to space, demonstrating first class risk and project management skills in designing and placing into orbit a complex, yet cost-effective satellite. Dr Mike Cutter was presented with the Society's Bronze Award for work of merit in the design, manufacture and exploitation in space of the CHRIS hyper-spectral camera.

SSTL was awarded the GIOVE-A contract in the summer of 2003 with a strict schedule to launch the satellite before the end of 2005. As the largest and most complex satellite SSTL had ever developed, the GIOVE-A project brought together a large multi-disciplinary team of up to 70 people to support development.

GIOVE-A team receive award

A core team of 10-20 people was responsible for the majority of the project co-ordination, system and payload engineering to deliver GIOVE-A to schedule. This core team was also essential to subsequent key phases of the mission such as the launch, commissioning and in-orbit test campaigns. Their understanding of GIOVE-A ensured that these critical activities were performed safely and efficiently, leading to the successful achievement of the main mission objectives.

Dr Mike Cutter receives award

CHRIS is the highest resolution hyper-spectral camera ever to be flown in space, made possible by BNSC funding. The design is particularly light in weight (14kg) and thrifty in its use of electrical power (8W), enabling it to be flown on a small satellite platform. CHRIS has been operational in space since the launch of PROBA in October 2001 and is in constant demand by more than 80 scientific groups across Europe and North America, Australia and China who use the flexible hyper-spectral modes of the instrument to analyse how various objects, materials and scenes can be analysed from orbit. Such research underpins important advances in remote sensing for environmental, farming, land use planning, water management and many other applications.

It is not the first time that the achievements of SSTL staff have been recognised by the RAeS. In 1998 Dr Marc Fouquet was presented with the Geoffrey Pardoe Space Award for a significant contribution to space as the principle designer of imaging systems for Earth observation and star tracking.

The Royal Aeronautical Society has been honouring outstanding achievers in the global aerospace industry since 1908, when Wilbur and Orville Wright came to London to receive the Society’s first two Gold Medals. In the years that have followed, honouring world aerospace achievers has become a permanent tradition of the Society. The Society’s Awards Programme rewards individuals who have made an exceptional contribution to aerospace, whether for a single outstanding contribution or achievement, a major technical innovation, for exceptional leadership, long and valued service, or for work that will further advance aerospace.

French press reports ESA small satellite views

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:49:29 +0100

SSTL has got a good mention in the French press this week, related to changing the economics of space.

Small satellites such as GIOVE-A, the first satellite of the ambitious Galileo project can be built to affordable budgets by SSTL to short and clearly defines timescales.

Paraphrasing (corrections welcome):

ESA has made a decision to source equipment from small suppliers as their experience with SSTL has proved this can be done more efficiently and at a lesser cost.

And for our French visitors here's an abstract:

L'Agence spatiale européenne mise sur les petits industriels pour faciliter ses projets innovants. Les gros industriels du secteur comme EADS ou Alcatel ont du souci à se faire. Plusieurs exemples récents ont convaincu l'agence que de nouveaux entrants comme le suédois SSC, l'allemand OHB, le belge Verhaert, le britannique Qinetiq ou l'espagnol Casa sont capables de fournir des satellites ou des équipements avec bien plus de réactivité et pour des coûts jusqu'à 2 fois moins chers. L'ESA a déjà appliqué cette stratégie pour les démonstrateurs du programme Galileo en choisissant la « jeune pousse » de l'université du Surrey, la Surrey Satellite Technology Limited.

SSTL welcomes a fresh start for Galileo

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 17:54:20 +0100

SSTL welcomes the agreement reached at the European Transport Council on today (8th June) on how to move ahead with the Galileo satellite navigation system. The deployment of the system will now be funded by the public sector. "Ministers decided to abandon the public-private partnership and start again from scratch," said European Commission transport spokesman Michele Cercone.

The agreement calls for more competition to be introduced so that the system can be procured quickly for rapid deployment of Galileo by 2012. This means that more innovative and efficient approaches can be adopted and that a wider range of European small and medium sized companies can contribute to the success of Galileo. This will also bring tangible benefits to the governments and the tax-payers investing in the Galileo system, and ultimately to the end user.

First satellite GIOVE-A

The agreement also calls for the procurement strategy to “reflect progress made so far”. Under a €28M contract signed in the second half of 2003, SSTL has already supplied the European Space Agency (ESA) with the very first Galileo satellite, GIOVE-A. GIOVE-A’s primary mission was to broadcast Galileo signals from space so that Europe could claim the frequencies filed for Galileo with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Under the rapidly-paced ESA contract, the satellite was designed, built, tested and launched before the end of 2005 – on-time and on-budget.

Following the signing of the resolution, Group Executive Chairman of SSTL, Sir Martin Sweeting, said:

“Through the GIOVE-A projects SSTL has already shown how small and medium sized companies can play a very significant role in Galileo. Over the coming weeks SSTL will be exploring ways of bringing a much-needed fresh approach to the implementation of Galileo”.

In January 2006, the first Galileo signals were transmitted from the satellite and in March 2006 ESA was able to confirm that it had brought the Galileo-related frequency filings into use, three months ahead of the official deadline. In 2007 GIOVE-A started to broadcast real navigation messages, containing the information needed by user receivers to calculate their position allowing research centres and receiver manufacturers to extend testing of their Galileo receiving equipment.

A recent announcement by ESA stated that “in the near future GIOVE-A will begin to continuously broadcast the navigation message, with the message content being updated whenever the satellite is visible from the Guildford uplink station. The message content will also be extended to include the time offset between GPS and the experimental Galileo system. Knowing this offset will allow the user to build a position fix using GPS satellites and GIOVE-A.” This will also help the research centres and equipment manufacturers to work towards their ultimate goal of user equipment able to work simultaneously with both GPS and Galileo.

Following on from the success of GIOVE-A, in March 2007 ESA placed a contract with SSTL for a second satellite named GIOVE-A2. This additional satellite will help maintain the critical ITU frequency filing secured by its predecessor for a further 27 months, will facilitate further development of ground equipment and may demonstrate additional features of the Galileo System.

Galileo is a joint initiative between ESA and the European Commission. When fully deployed in the early years of the next decade, it will be the first non-military positioning system to offer global coverage. For a light tecnhical discussion of Galileo and the role of GIOVE-A why not listen to the GIOVE-A Podcast (recorded before launch in Decemeber 2005).

GIOVE-A transmits first navigation message

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Tue, 08 May 2007 11:18:23 +0100

Earlier this week, the SSTL built GIOVE-A satellite successfully transmitted its first navigation message, containing the information needed by user receivers to calculate their position. Prior to reaching this milestone, the satellite had been broadcasting only the data needed for measuring the receiver-to-satellite distance.

GIOVE-A in vacuum chamber, ESTEC

The first Galileo navigation message was created by the navigation signal generator unit on board GIOVE-A, using content prepared by the GIOVE Mission Segment. This week-one navigation message was uplinked to GIOVE-A on 2 May from the Guildford ground station operated by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (United Kingdom) and then transmitted from the spacecraft to the users. The objective of the test was to demonstrate an end-to-end link between the Mission Segment and the user receivers. The navigation message is being generated for demonstration purposes only – no service guarantee is provided.

The complete radio transmission from GIOVE-A carries a navigation signal and a navigation message. The navigation signal contains the information needed to accurately measure the distance from the satellite to the user receiver. The navigation message provides the timing and spacecraft orbit data needed to calculate the time and exact position of the satellite. One of the main tasks of the GIOVE Mission Segment is the generation of this navigation message.

GIOVE Mission Segment

The GIOVE Mission Segment comprises two main elements, a world-wide network of 13 Galileo experimental sensor stations and the GIOVE Processing Centre (GPC) located at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

Note: The GPC is operated by European Satellite Navigation Industries (ESNIS) – the new name for Galileo Industries.

SSTL's GIOVE-A team at ESTEC

In order to generate the navigation message, the sensor stations track the signal-in-space from GIOVE-A and send the tracking information to the processing centre. The GPC computes, among other things, the precise satellite flight path and on-board clock model. It then generates a prediction of the orbital path and clock performance for the near-term future, which is the basis of the navigation message. Next, this message is transmitted to GIOVE-A which retransmits it to the user.

Aside from navigation message generation, the primary tasks of the GIOVE Mission Segment are performance characterisation of the on-board clocks, orbit modelling, and operations planning & telemetry analysis for the navigation payload.

Another validation step completed

On 12 January 2006, GIOVE A transmitted the first Galileo signals, thereby securing the frequencies allocated to Galileo by the International Telecommunication Union. Now, the transmissions are carrying a navigation message – this means that the satellite is providing information that is needed by a receiver to calculate its position.

Although the navigation message structure of GIOVE-A is slightly different, the GIOVE-A navigation transmissions are fully representative of those that will be sent by the operational Galileo system. The operating principles are identical and the achievement of the first navigation message is another important step in the validation of the Galileo system design.

GPS interoperability

Following this successful test, in the near future GIOVE-A will begin to continuously broadcast the navigation message, with the message content being updated whenever the satellite is visible from the Guildford uplink station. Additionally, the message content will be extended to include the time offset between GPS and the experimental Galileo system. Knowing this offset, the Experimental Galileo-GPS Time Offset (E-GGTO), will allow the user to build a position fix using GPS satellites and GIOVE-A.

Galileo is a joint initiative between ESA and the European Commission. When fully deployed in the early years of the next decade, it will be the first civilian positioning system to offer global coverage.

ESA press release: GIOVE-A transmits first navigation message

What next?

SSTL were awarded a second contract on March 5th 2007 for initial activities leading to the construction of a second spacecraft for the Galileo satellite navigation system. Named GIOVE-A2, the new satellite (estimated total value 25 to 30 million Euros) will be based on the company’s proven GIOVE-A technology. From now on, there will always be a European navigation satellite in space.

ESA press release: GIOVE-A2 to secure the Galileo programme

HRH Duke of Edinburgh presents award to SSTL

nospam@example.com (Robin Wolstenholme) — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 09:16:45 +0000

This month, SSTL CEO Sir Martin Sweeting received the Royal Institute of Navigation's Harold Spencer Jones Award for "an outstanding contribution to navigation". The award was presented by the institute's patron, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh (photo).

The award recognises SSTL's achievement in the construction and successful launch of the first Galileo validation satellite, GIOVE-A.

Sir Martin was invited for the President's Address to speak on "Small Satellites - Changing the Economics of Space". The talk discussed how affordable small satellites such as GIOVE-A enable low cost constellations to be built providing highly capable distributed systems.

Earlier in the day Elizabeth Rooney and Andrew Bradford from SSTL collected certificates of achievement on behalf of their colleagues at SSTL for the work carried out on GIOVE-A.