Slashgeo

GeoCarta links to an article about the European Galileo project halted by serious problems. From the article: "Plans to launch a European satellite navigation system to rival the US global positioning system have ground to a halt following a break down in relations between governments and private contractors. Jacques Barrot, the transport commissioner, said on Wednesday he was writing to the eight companies building the Galileo system to discover the reason for more than a year's delay. "They are just not working," said his spokesman. [...] There were originally to be 30 satellites in place by 2010 but Mr Barrot's spokesman said the system would not be operational until 2011, and the timetable was slipping by the day. China recently said its Beidou system would cover China and its neighbours by 2008, and then the rest of the world." See also the numerous related stories below.

Slashdot runs a story about Europe's Galileo program in serious trouble. Vector One also provides interesting analysis of Galileo's status. The Slashdot summary: "Various news outlets are reporting that Europe's Galileo program is facing a serious financial and technical crisis and may be permanently stalled. The European program, designed to be a superior answer to the US's GPS — and, more critically, not controlled by the US — has faced numerous hurdles since its inception. To date the Galileo program has succeeded in launching only one of its 30 planned satellites and has been beset by delays and cost overruns. Apparently, squabbling between the eight companies in the consortium behind the project is responsible for many of the problems. The project is now threatened with an EU takeover. But some doubt that even an infusion of EU capital can save the flagging program." See previous stories below about the problems.

After serious troubles on the Galileo front, the European Parliament is now financially backing Galileo. From the short article: "The EU Parliament wants to reopen the EU's long-term budget perspectives to fund Galileo, whereas a majority of member states prefer taking the missing €2.4 billion from other EU programmes. According to estimates, some €3.4 billion will be needed to put Galileo's 30 satellites into orbit, whereas currently only €1 billion is foreseen for the operational expenditure in the EU's long term budget 2007-2013."

In an update to a previous story about plans for GPS and Galileo compatibility, GISDevelopment.net links to a story at Location about a new agreement between the US and the EU for making their respective navigation satellite systems, GPS and Galileo, compatible. From the article: "The European Commission (EC) said a joint working group had overcome technical challenges to design interoperable civil signals. Experts have agreed that a multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) waveform will be used on both systems instead of the binary offset carrier, or BOC (1,1) waveform, as stated in a 1984 agreement between the United States and the EU. The MBOC signal was proposed by a technical working group to examine further refinements to the design. Future receivers using the MBOC signal should be able to track the GPS and/or Galileo signals with higher accuracy in challenging environments that include multipath, noise, and interference, said the EC."

Galileo is targeted to be operational in 2012.

Here's a few recent news regarding GALILEO and GLONASS GPS systems. I copied in related stories below many items of interest regarding the two programs. Recent geoblogs entries include Vector One discussing GALILEO: "Today Christopher Booker of the Telegraph newspaper in the UK sums up the project in his column, “The costs of Galileo have already taken off so wildly (and it is already six years behind schedule), that we may well hand over much more than £1.7 billion to pay for our 17 per cent share in this white elephant (somehow two thirds of the EU’s members have managed to get out of paying anything at all).”" Google's Ed Parsons chimes in. Meanwhile, GLONASS seems in much better shape, as indicated by this other V1 entry and the news of the successful new GLONASS satellite launch.

A few geoblogs discussed the European GALILEO project and the news are more or less good. Amongst the entries, you have GeoCarta underlines the 2.4 billion euros of fresh money sent to GALILEO required to continue development, from The Register: "States voted to back a €2.4bn funding deal, drawing cash from unused farming subsidies, and restructuring research and industrial spending for the year. This means the European rival to the US military's GPS system can go ahead, but no extra public funds will be written into the EU's budget to pay for it." V1 also discuss this impressive amount of leftovers and provides other links, V1 also make a relation to the U.S. updated GPS III satellites: "The US military is working on super-powerful updates to its GPS satellite navigation technology to try to trump the rival European Galileo project which just received key funding, experts say." Not as much tightly related, APB links to survey indicating Garmin is the #1 maker of portable navigation systems, consumers say. Update: 11/30 20:12 GMT by S : Let's not forget GLONASS, here's a recent article where we learn: "Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, wants to spend at least $60 billion over the next 10 years to make Russia a global high-tech titan [...]"