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Europe's New Constellation

With Galileo, Brussels Hopes for a Cash Cow

By Hilmar Schmundt

Galileo, the European navigation system, has launched its first test satellite and hopes to give the US-run GPS system a run for its money. Will the transmitters in space lead to a miracle in the job market here on earth? And how European is the project, anyway?

In late December, a Soyuz rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. On board was Giove A, a satellite weighing only 600 kilograms. A few hours later it was circling the earth at an altitude of 23,000 kilometers and transmitting its first signals.

This test satellite is a precursor for Galileo, the European navigation system. The transmitters in space will supposedly guide vehicles on earth to their destinations -- as well as planes to their runways, and hikers along their trails -- with far greater accuracy than current American transmitters. A fleet of 30 satellites is being developed jointly by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the EU at a cost of around €3.6 billion, and it could be in use from 2010 at the earliest.

Yet this early New Year’s rocket gave little cause for cheer in Europe, because the program is already two years behind schedule. The reason for the “glacier-like” tempo -- as the magazine “Aviation Week” put it -- has been endless quarrelling among the partner countries. Germany, which is contributing half a billion euros to the project, felt snubbed by the allocation of control centers, and imposed a payment freeze. It was only decided in December that one of the two control centers would be in Oberpfaffenhofen in Bavaria. The dispute was defused just in time: if Giove A hadn’t been on air by June 2006 at the latest, then the ITU, the international body which allocates frequencies with headquarters in Geneva, would have taken back the frequency which had been reserved for Galileo.

The project is burdened with sky-high expectations. Three reasons in particular are given for Europe to have its own satellite fleet:

- Galileo will be far more accurate than the current GPS navigation system.

- Galileo cannot be manipulated by the US military, which built the GPS system.

- Galileo should create an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs.

Even if the navigation system fulfills all its expectations, though, it may prove a disappointment. Galileo is a civilian space flight project. As opposed to GPS satellites, Galileo satellites cannot, therefore, be switched off by the Pentagon in an emergency. Still, the reception of the Galileo satellites can be interfered with from earth.

During the Kosovo war, for example, users of navigation devices in the Balkan region, all the way to Austria, were again and again misled. It was initially thought that the US military had transmitted deceptive satellite signals on purpose. Yet many experts now think that the misleading data didn’t come directly from the satellites but from jammers -- interfering transmitters on earth -- which can be used quickly, flexibly and locally. So  the United States could be in a postion to interfere with not only GPS but also Galileo in an emergency.

Of course, there are other possible saboteurs. The US military worries about attacks on satellite navigation –- by terrorists, for example, who want to paralyze an airport. Instructions for jammers already circulate on the Internet.

During times of peace, though, Galileo should work more reliably than the GPS system. For one thing, the European satellites will have far more accurate rubidium atomic clocks on board; for another, there will be more satellites, which makes “shading” of the signal less likely. (Shadows or holes in transmission can occur when users are on narrow roads surrounded by high-rise buildings.) But even the Galileo signals won’t penetrate buildings or dense forests.

New navigation devices will be able to recognize GPS as well as Galileo signals, so the total sum of available satellites will increase to over 50. This is a clear advantage for consumers, but it weakens Galileo's competitive edge over the Americans (who profit from their own GPS system anyway).

Also, Galileo's accuracy may not be fantastically better than the GPS system's -- contrary to claims in advertising material, which says a user might be guided to a destination “right down to the last centimeter,” sometime in the future. Realistically, Galileo will only be around ten times more accurate than GPS. Which is to say: a normal GPS receiver can bring hikers to within ten meters of their tent; equipped with a Galileo receiver the size of a mobile phone, the same hikers should come within one meter.

“It will hardly be possible to achieve an accuracy of more than one meter with Galileo without the use of additional technology,” says Wolfgang Lechner, a specialist at the Bavarian navigation company Telematica and a consultant to the specialist magazine, “GPS World.” In fact, there is already a potential for one-meter accuracy in the existing GPS system. The trick is simple; it's called differential GPS (DGPS). Additional terrestrial transmitters installed near harbors (for example) can hone the raw data from space.

Services like Egnos in Europe and WAAS in the USA work according to a similar principle. Egnos is a differential service designed for air traffic, whereby dozens of terrestrial stations (like ones in Berlin, Zurich and Paris) monitor GPS signals, so users don't have to set up their own radio stations. The stations send any corrected values via satellite to special receivers. If the data becomes too inaccurate, the station can also transmit a warning so the pilot knows not to rely 100 per cent on the navigation device.

The benefits of this error correction system are immense, and the costs are minimal – Egnos actually achieves much of what Galileo is touted for, but at tenth of the cost (or €300 million). Until now, such differential services have been available only in high-density areas, but it's questionable whether navigation accurate to one meter is even necessary in remoter areas.

Still, the fact that the current monopoly in the skies is finally getting some real competition is being welcomed on all sides. Which doesn’t guarantee financial success. Witness Glonass, the only alternative to GPS up until now. The system was constructed by the Soviet Union during the 1980s as a military system, and it's a perfect example of how a navigation system can fail in the market if it's half-heartedly operated.

Glonass has shrunk from 24 to 10 satellites due to a lack of money. India is slated to help with its reconstruction. Germans use the Russian navigation system (under the name Ascos)  for measuring building sites. Otherwise, it's seen as a financial flop. From 2000 on, the Russian model no longer stood a chance against GPS. It was then that Bill Clinton, the US president at the time, recognized the financial benefits of his military satellites, and stopped the artificial impairment of civil radio signals which had been practiced until then.

There's little danger that the European Galileo system will fail like Glonass. The navigation market is booming as never before. The management consulting agency PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts a rosy future for Galileo; other experts think the project will create thousands of jobs. But there's a catch: they might not be in Europe.

The reason for this is that Europeans keep bringing in new partners. Apart from Morocco, Ukraine and Israel, India is also helping Galileo with a contribution of €280 million. Even China is contributing €200 million. But global expansion has a price. Experts in the industry think end-devices for receiving navigation signals will be manufactured in India and China, where labor is cheaper.

Even while the Galileo operators were celebrating the launch of their first satellite, representatives of medium-sized enterprises have complained that too little is happening on the ground to develop new, pioneering services for the navigation technology. It is only now that special Galileo test centers are being set up, for example in Berlin and Berchtesgaden, where innovative applications will be developed. Most of the new jobs in the navigation industry in Germany will be specifically in this high-paying sector. Yet even this home advantage is fading fast: a Galileo research center has already opened in Peking.