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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: John Carragher who wrote (153434)	1/3/2006 9:11:40 AM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793549

This is cool. The WaPo links to my brother's blog! At the end of the article there is a "Who's blogging" box, my brother's blog is the poolbar. He's the smart guy in the family. <g> With Satellite Launch, E.U. Positions Itself To Compete Navigational System Aims To Break U.S. Monopoly By Molly Moore Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, December 29, 2005; A14 PARIS, Dec. 28 -- The European Union on Wednesday launched the first satellite in its $4.5 billion Galileo global positioning system, a bid to enhance the world's growing reliance on satellite navigation and break the U.S. monopoly on space-based networks. Officials of the European Space Agency said the Galileo system -- scheduled to begin operation in 2008 -- will double the world's satellite coverage, now provided by the U.S. military's Global Positioning System. Galileo will be more accurate than its American counterpart for civilian uses and so will allow such enhanced services as tracing emergency calls to within a yard of their origin and helping tourists find an ATM in a strange city using a chip inserted into a cell phone, the officials said. Many Europeans see political significance in the project, too: The world's only civilian-controlled system will give Europe and its partner nations independence from the United States, which has warned it could diminish or cut off GPS satellite coverage to countries considered enemies in times of national emergency. Galileo represents "the independence of the European Union," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said Wednesday after the 1,300-pound test satellite soared into orbit atop a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Plans call for the system to eventually include necklaces of 30 satellites above Earth. The project will also give a major boost to the European aerospace industry. The European Space Agency says it will guarantee operation of Galileo at all times except in case of the "direst emergency." It did not define what such an emergency would be. Galileo has been delayed by internal bickering among European governments over financing and by U.S. opposition. The Pentagon complained that Galileo's signals could interfere with the next-generation military GPS system, posing a potential security threat during wartime. The United States and Europe eventually reached a cooperative working agreement for the two systems. The launch comes at a time when Russia is moving forward with a positioning system known as GLONASS. On Sunday it put into orbit three new satellites for the network, which is scheduled to begin operating in 2010. Operators of the new systems foresee global cooperation. "We are preparing agreements with Americans and Europeans which will allow the creation of a single global navigation system in the future," Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's Roskosmos space agency, told the ITAR-Tass news agency after Sunday's launch. With more satellites circling the globe, civilians almost anywhere on the planet could switch navigation systems as easily as mobile phones shift between service providers, according to European space agency officials. The U.S. system, currently the only one in operation, was designed for the military, and in its encrypted mode is used to guide warplanes through the air and precision weapons to their targets. In its less accurate civilian mode, it has fed development of hand-held positioning devices for recreational boaters and automobile navigation systems. But it works poorly in some parts of the world, including northern Europe. In urban neighborhoods, high-rise buildings can block signals from satellites that are low on the horizon. European Space Agency officials said Galileo could be linked to chips integrated into mobile telephones to direct users to restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, hospitals and parks. The satellite system would determine the person's precise location and give directions from that point. For governments, the additional satellites and improved accuracy could provide new tools for controlling air traffic, dispatching emergency vehicles, managing traffic jams and identifying drivers using toll roads. European armed forces would also use the system. Galileo is designed to provide real-time positioning accuracy to within one meter, or about 39 inches, "which is unprecedented for a publicly available system," according to the European Space Agency's description. Civilian services available on the U.S. network are accurate to within about 16 feet. Clocks aboard the Galileo satellites will keep time to within "a few hundred millionths of a second per day," according to the European Space Agency. Precision in identifying locations is dependent on accurate time, according to Franco Emma, a clock expert at the European Space Agency technical center in the Netherlands. "You can determine your position on the Earth's surface by measuring the time taken for a signal broadcast by a navigation satellite to reach you," Emma wrote in a technology report explaining the system. "You need to know precisely when the signal left the satellite and precisely when it arrived at your receiver." The relatively small satellite that was launched Wednesday will be used to test the clocks and frequencies for the Galileo program, as well as the effects of radiation on the equipment. The satellite, essentially a box of electronics, stretches 23 feet from the tip of one of its solar panels to the tip of the other. In addition to technical hurdles, financial challenges remain. European authorities must line up corporate investors for about two-thirds of the cost of the system. The European Space Agency has also warned that Galileo, a joint venture between the space agency and the European Union, faces numerous bureaucratic obstacles because it involves so many countries. China, India, Israel, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine are all partners in the project. © 2006 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com thepoolbar.blogspot.com