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The European GNSS Agency (GSA), along with the European GNSS Service Centre (GSC), announce the commissioning of two additional Galileo satellites, increasing the total number of satellites available for service provision to 16.

The GSA announced the completion of in-orbit testing (IOT) of two new Galileo satellites, GSAT0207–SV ID 07- and GSAT0214–SV ID 05-, which were launched in November last year. Having passed all initial tests, the two satellites are now officially commissioned for operational use and are usable for service provision, as stated in the most recent NAGUs published on the GSC web portal (NAGU 2017017 and NAGU 2017018).

The satellites were launched along with two others (GSAT0212 –SV ID 03- and GSAT0213 –SV ID 04-) from Kourou in French Guiana on November 17, 2016. They were the first to be launched using an Ariane-5 rocket.

Watch This: GSA ready for Initial Services

The two new satellites reinforce the provision of Galileo Initial Services, which were declared on December 15th, 2016. This will be further strengthened after the other two satellites launched in November also become commissioned. Additional satellites will be launched over the course of the coming years, enlarging the Galileo constellation and gradually improving Galileo’s global performance. The constellation is set to reach full operational capability in 2020.

About Galileo

Galileo is Europe's civilian global satellite navigation system. It allows users worldwide to know their exact position in time and space with great precision and reliability. Once complete, the Galileo system will consist of 30 satellites and the necessary ground infrastructure to enable the provision of positioning, navigation and timing services.

The Galileo programme is funded and owned by the European Union. The European Commission has the overall responsibility for the Galileo programme, managing and overseeing the implementation of all programme activities.

Galileo's deployment, the design and development of the new generation of systems and the technical development of infrastructure are entrusted to the European Space Agency (ESA). The definition, development and in-orbit validation phases of the Galileo programme were carried out by ESA, and co-funded by ESA and the European Commission.

The GSA is charged with ensuring the uptake and security of Galileo. As of 2017, the GSA is responsible for all Galileo operations and the provision of Galileo services.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

GSA Executive Director Carlo des Dorides provides an update on the status of E-GNSS at the 2017 European Navigation Conference (ENC) in Lausanne, Switzerland, on 10 May.

European GNSS Agency (GSA) Executive Director Carlo des Dorides provided ENC 2017 attendees with a status update on both Galileo and EGNOS. Speaking as part of an expert panel on multi-constellation operation and services, des Dorides noted that the number of Galileo-compatible receivers had increased significantly since 2010, and that all the major world players were now implementing Galileo-compatible solutions. “We are starting to see remarkable results with the first new smartphones, which account for the largest GNSS market share. These results bear testimony to how much Galileo has achieved,” he said.

To keep users up-to-date with detailed information on all available Galileo-compatible products, the GSA has launched www.useGalileo.eu. From this dedicated tool available in 24 languages, users can easily browse the list of currently available Galileo-enabled products and devices and search for devices based on user segment. 

Read this: Use Galileo today!

Des Dorides said that 2016 was a milestone year for Galileo, with the Declaration of Galileo Initial Services in December, adding that over the next two years work will be conducted to gradually ramp up and complete the system. “We are expecting to have four more satellites launched this year and to have the complete constellation of 30 satellites fully deployed by 2020,” he said. Des Dorides stressed that the results from the past few years were very encouraging and that performance parameters, such as ranging accuracy and UTC time dissemination accuracy, have been excellent.

Building trust in GNSS

Asked about innovations or designs that improve the trustworthiness of GNSS systems, des Dorides highlighted a three-fold approach comprising of a multi-constellation system, double frequencies and authentication. “From the E-GNSS perspective, we believe in the multi-constellation concept, which means more satellites and better availability and accuracy,” he said.

Read this: The shift towards a multi-constellation environment

Furthermore, the introduction of a second frequency will also improve accuracy as it allows better ionospheric correction and improves the reliability of positioning, velocity and timing (PVT) data. “Adding two frequencies makes the system less vulnerable to jamming and spoofing,” des Dorides said. Finally, he noted that Galileo will provide authentication across a range of services – open, commercial and public regulated (PRS) – adding that the combination of these three elements will increase the trustworthiness of the system.

Imtiaz Ali Khan, from the Indian Space Research Organisation, also highlighted the benefits that a second frequency brings. The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS) uses multiple frequencies, which, according to Khan, reduces the risk of intentional or unintentional interference. “This is underpinned by a failure message alert system that allows users to switch to an alternate system in the event of failure,” he said.

Read this: Dual Frequency: The Next Mass Market Revolution for GNSS?

GLONASS delegate Igor Silvestrov, from the VNIIFTRI research institute in the Russian Federation, stressed the need for cooperation with receiver manufacturers. According to him, Russian receiver manufacturers are closely involved in discussions about what properties new GLONASS signals need to have to allow users to receive additional information. “The new Interface Control Documents (ICDs) were developed in close cooperation with the receiver manufacturers,” he said.

Lieutenant David Besson from the US Airforce GPS Directorate talked about the ongoing work being done to improve the trustworthiness of GNSS in the US. He noted that the US Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) was very involved in Advanced Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring (ARAIM), which is essentially an algorithm that allows an aircraft to assess whether it can trust the GPS signals it receives. “ARAIM is the way of the future, a way to get more information to the receiver about the integrity of the information it is receiving,” he said, adding that the technology could also be used in other areas of application, such as autonomous cars.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

Satisfaction was in evidence as participants, experts and judges had good things to say about the second Galileo Hackathon in Gdynia.

Speaking at the Galileo Hackathon awards ceremony at the infoShare 2017 conference in Gdansk, Nottingham University Professor Lukasz Bonenberg said, "We started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, just 24 hours, and it was really a great competition."

Bonenberg's presentation at the beginning of the Hackathon, introducing participants to GNSS raw measurements in smartphones, was crucial to getting the ball rolling. He was joined by fellow academician Professor Roland Wagner of Berlin's Beuth University of Technology and representatives of the GSA; ESA, Airbus, Samsung and HyperTrack, in providing direct one-on-one coaching throughout the event.

The GSA's Justyna Redelkievicz explained, "We decided that this should be a very selective Hackathon, because we wanted to be able to work with and assist each and every one of the participants. For what we wanted to do, seven teams was really the maximum, to be able to help them to do their coding and then listen to and evaluate every presentation, these were things we really chose to focus on."

Also read: Hackathon 2017 expands Galileo community

"We managed to have a very lively discussion about how to use Galileo," Bonenberg said, "and we got to look at and talk about several important new Galileo-based applications created by the teams during the Hackathon."

The specific task of the participants was to come up with innovative applications able to bring an added commercial or societal value by using Galileo services. Suggested topics or areas included:

• Augmented Reality and Games
• Geo marketing and advertising
• Mapping and GIS
• Fitness, sport and mHealth
• Smart mobility
• Enterprise applications
• Social networking

Winners' words

After a gruelling 24 hours, three prizes were awarded, starting with the Galileo Impact Award, which went to Pola Mierzejewska, Jakub Jastrzębski, Mikołaj Pęcak and Maciej Burchardt from team CDV.

As Jastrzębski explained, the winning project, called 'Awesome City', is an app that helps users make their cities better. "This means that you can actually do something yourself for the betterment of your city," he said. "It can start simple, with for example picking up garbage in your street." The Awesome City app allows users to get positions for places where they have undertaken positive actions.

"With the more people who use the app, with everybody making a small difference, the end result can be something really great, a great experience, a better city experience for everybody."

Jastrzębski said he and his teammates were impressed by the competition. "We got some really great insights into raw Galileo measurements. Everybody did a good job using GNSS positioning for their apps. The GSA team and the HyperTrack team did a truly good job helping us out. We appreciated their efforts to help us make our app better."

Unique approach

Next up were the winners of the Galileo Innovate Award, which went to Rayan Ouzeri, Xiao Liu and David Hriadel from team ENAC (Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile).

ENAC took a different approach to most of the other contestants. "We wanted to go deeper," said Hriadel, "to make use of the newest technologies available, that is Android Nougat raw measurements and online Galileo data, and we tried to merge these two new technologies together and create something that everybody could gain from."

Read this: GNSS mobile apps – using Nougat to access raw GNSS measurements

What they did was essentially to increase the positioning performance of a smartphone by enabling differential GNSS capabilities, and then they created an app allowing users to share their improved performance with social network friends.

Team ENAC hard at work building their CoGeo project during this year’s MyGalileo hackathon. You can find their project presentation here.

Finally, a special prize was awarded by Galileo Hackathon partner HyperTrack, the prize going to Jeffrey Wallace, Angelica Marques Valdivia and Spencer Depas, alias the Midnight Coders, for their project “Safewayz”.

Jeffrey Wallace explained: "It's a safety app whose main feature is its ability to send out an SOS from your phone to the HyperTrack back end, but then allows you to be tracked and get a more accurate location for first responders, whether it's police or other help."

Wallace, who happens to be American, said the competition was very tough. "You know, Europe is a very interesting technical community. I think the world focuses too much on Silicon Valley and what goes on in the USA, because in my opinion, scientifically, Europe is where it's at."

No stopping now

The winning teams each took home a cash prize of 1000 Euros and Samsung also gave away several Gear S3 watches to lucky hackers, but for all of the participants, winners or not, the experience gained and the new friends and contacts made far outweighed the material reward.

Again speaking at the awards ceremony in Gdansk, Professor Bonenberg said, "We had a very hard time choosing the winners, and this is an indication of just how good all of the applications were. It was an amazing experience and I for one would like to do it again in the future."

And with that, we look forward to the next Galileo Hackathon. Keep watching this space for further announcements.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

Satisfaction was in evidence as participants, experts and judges had good things to say about the second Galileo Hackathon in Gdynia.

Speaking at the Galileo Hackathon awards ceremony at the infoShare 2017 conference in Gdansk, Nottingham University Professor Lukasz Bonenberg said, "We started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, just 24 hours, and it was really a great competition."

Bonenberg's presentation at the beginning of the Hackathon, introducing participants to GNSS raw measurements in smartphones, was crucial to getting the ball rolling. He was joined by fellow academician Professor Roland Wagner of Berlin's Beuth University of Technology and representatives of the GSA; ESA, Airbus, Samsung and HyperTrack, in providing direct one-on-one coaching throughout the event.

The GSA's Justyna Redelkievicz explained, "We decided that this should be a very selective Hackathon, because we wanted to be able to work with and assist each and every one of the participants. For what we wanted to do, seven teams was really the maximum, to be able to help them to do their coding and then listen to and evaluate every presentation, these were things we really chose to focus on."

Also read: Hackathon 2017 expands Galileo community

"We managed to have a very lively discussion about how to use Galileo," Bonenberg said, "and we got to look at and talk about several important new Galileo-based applications created by the teams during the Hackathon."

The specific task of the participants was to come up with innovative applications able to bring an added commercial or societal value by using Galileo services. Suggested topics or areas included:

• Augmented Reality and Games
• Geo marketing and advertising
• Mapping and GIS
• Fitness, sport and mHealth
• Smart mobility
• Enterprise applications
• Social networking

Winners' words

After a gruelling 24 hours, three prizes were awarded, starting with the Galileo Impact Award, which went to Pola Mierzejewska, Jakub Jastrzębski, Mikołaj Pęcak and Maciej Burchardt from team CDV.

As Jastrzębski explained, the winning project, called 'Awesome City', is an app that helps users make their cities better. "This means that you can actually do something yourself for the betterment of your city," he said. "It can start simple, with for example picking up garbage in your street." The Awesome City app allows users to get positions for places where they have undertaken positive actions.

"With the more people who use the app, with everybody making a small difference, the end result can be something really great, a great experience, a better city experience for everybody."

Jastrzębski said he and his teammates were impressed by the competition. "We got some really great insights into raw Galileo measurements. Everybody did a good job using GNSS positioning for their apps. The GSA team and the HyperTrack team did a truly good job helping us out. We appreciated their efforts to help us make our app better."

Unique approach

Next up were the winners of the Galileo Innovate Award, which went to Rayan Ouzeri, Xiao Liu and David Hriadel from team ENAC (Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile).

ENAC took a different approach to most of the other contestants. "We wanted to go deeper," said Hriadel, "to make use of the newest technologies available, that is Android Nougat raw measurements and online Galileo data, and we tried to merge these two new technologies together and create something that everybody could gain from."

Read this: GNSS mobile apps – using Nougat to access raw GNSS measurements

What they did was essentially to increase the positioning performance of a smartphone by enabling differential GNSS capabilities, and then they created an app allowing users to share their improved performance with social network friends.

Team ENAC hard at work building their CoGeo project during this year’s MyGalileo hackathon. You can find their project presentation here.

Finally, a special prize was awarded by Galileo Hackathon partner HyperTrack, the prize going to Jeffrey Wallace, Angelica Marques Valdivia and Spencer Depas, alias the Midnight Coders, for their project “Safewayz”.

Jeffrey Wallace explained: "It's a safety app whose main feature is its ability to send out an SOS from your phone to the HyperTrack back end, but then allows you to be tracked and get a more accurate location for first responders, whether it's police or other help."

Wallace, who happens to be American, said the competition was very tough. "You know, Europe is a very interesting technical community. I think the world focuses too much on Silicon Valley and what goes on in the USA, because in my opinion, scientifically, Europe is where it's at."

No stopping now

The winning teams each took home a cash prize of 1000 Euros and Samsung also gave away several Gear S3 watches to lucky hackers, but for all of the participants, winners or not, the experience gained and the new friends and contacts made far outweighed the material reward.

Again speaking at the awards ceremony in Gdansk, Professor Bonenberg said, "We had a very hard time choosing the winners, and this is an indication of just how good all of the applications were. It was an amazing experience and I for one would like to do it again in the future."

And with that, we look forward to the next Galileo Hackathon. Keep watching this space for further announcements.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).

Satisfaction was in evidence as participants, experts and judges had good things to say about the second Galileo Hackathon in Gdynia.

Speaking at the Galileo Hackathon awards ceremony at the infoShare 2017 conference in Gdansk, Nottingham University Professor Lukasz Bonenberg said, "We started on Monday and finished on Tuesday, just 24 hours, and it was really a great competition."

Bonenberg's presentation at the beginning of the Hackathon, introducing participants to GNSS raw measurements in smartphones, was crucial to getting the ball rolling. He was joined by fellow academician Professor Roland Wagner of Berlin's Beuth University of Technology and representatives of the GSA; ESA, Airbus, Samsung and HyperTrack, in providing direct one-on-one coaching throughout the event.

The GSA's Justyna Redelkievicz explained, "We decided that this should be a very selective Hackathon, because we wanted to be able to work with and assist each and every one of the participants. For what we wanted to do, seven teams was really the maximum, to be able to help them to do their coding and then listen to and evaluate every presentation, these were things we really chose to focus on."

Also read: Hackathon 2017 expands Galileo community

"We managed to have a very lively discussion about how to use Galileo," Bonenberg said, "and we got to look at and talk about several important new Galileo-based applications created by the teams during the Hackathon."

The specific task of the participants was to come up with innovative applications able to bring an added commercial or societal value by using Galileo services. Suggested topics or areas included:

• Augmented Reality and Games
• Geo marketing and advertising
• Mapping and GIS
• Fitness, sport and mHealth
• Smart mobility
• Enterprise applications
• Social networking

Winners' words

After a gruelling 24 hours, three prizes were awarded, starting with the Galileo Impact Award, which went to Pola Mierzejewska, Jakub Jastrzębski, Mikołaj Pęcak and Maciej Burchardt from team CDV.

As Jastrzębski explained, the winning project, called 'Awesome City', is an app that helps users make their cities better. "This means that you can actually do something yourself for the betterment of your city," he said. "It can start simple, with for example picking up garbage in your street." The Awesome City app allows users to get positions for places where they have undertaken positive actions.

Team CDV took a unique approach, with an app that rewarded acts of constructive citizenship such as public repairs and reviews. You can find their project presentation here.

"With the more people who use the app, with everybody making a small difference, the end result can be something really great, a great experience, a better city experience for everybody."

Jastrzębski said he and his teammates were impressed by the competition. "We got some really great insights into raw Galileo measurements. Everybody did a good job using GNSS positioning for their apps. The GSA team and the HyperTrack team did a truly good job helping us out. We appreciated their efforts to help us make our app better."

Unique approach

Next up were the winners of the Galileo Innovate Award, which went to Rayan Ouzeri, Xiao Liu and David Hriadel from team ENAC (Ecole Nationale de l’Aviation Civile).

ENAC took a different approach to most of the other contestants. "We wanted to go deeper," said Hriadel, "to make use of the newest technologies available, that is Android Nougat raw measurements and online Galileo data, and we tried to merge these two new technologies together and create something that everybody could gain from."

Read this: GNSS mobile apps – using Nougat to access raw GNSS measurements

What they did was essentially to increase the positioning performance of a smartphone by enabling differential GNSS capabilities, and then they created an app allowing users to share their improved performance with social network friends.

Team ENAC hard at work building their CoGeo project during this year’s MyGalileo hackathon. You can find their project presentation here.

Finally, a special prize was awarded by Galileo Hackathon partner HyperTrack, the prize going to Jeffrey Wallace, Angelica Marques Valdivia and Spencer Depas, alias the Midnight Coders, for their project “Safewayz”.

Jeffrey Wallace explained: "It's a safety app whose main feature is its ability to send out an SOS from your phone to the HyperTrack back end, but then allows you to be tracked and get a more accurate location for first responders, whether it's police or other help."

Wallace, who happens to be American, said the competition was very tough. "You know, Europe is a very interesting technical community. I think the world focuses too much on Silicon Valley and what goes on in the USA, because in my opinion, scientifically, Europe is where it's at."

No stopping now

The winning teams each took home a cash prize of 1000 Euros and Samsung also gave away several Gear S3 watches to lucky hackers, but for all of the participants, winners or not, the experience gained and the new friends and contacts made far outweighed the material reward.

Again speaking at the awards ceremony in Gdansk, Professor Bonenberg said, "We had a very hard time choosing the winners, and this is an indication of just how good all of the applications were. It was an amazing experience and I for one would like to do it again in the future."

And with that, we look forward to the next Galileo Hackathon. Keep watching this space for further announcements.

Media note: This feature can be republished without charge provided the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is acknowledged as the source at the top or the bottom of the story. You must request permission before you use any of the photographs on the site. If you republish, we would be grateful if you could link back to the GSA website (http://www.gsa.europa.eu).