Talk:Galileo (satellite navigation)

Legal issues
Two issues -

1) There was some talk of blocking GPS in Europe, to force users to pay a fee for using Galileo. Blocking a navigational system in peace time is iffy in law.

That sounds highly unlikely, probably was a bored journalist or politician making that claim. technically and politically/economically not viable.

2) If a navigational aid is being used by one side in a war, even if it is being provided by a third party, it is a legitimate target for the other side. This goes back to precendents regarding lighthouses which date back beyond the Napoleonic wars. If one side is using the Galileo system for targeting weapons, and the administrators of the system refuse to block this, then the system become a legitimate target. That is one reason why the US reserves the right to turn the GPS system off (partially or otherwise).

This means that in the event of war, Galileo may have to be turned off (probably partially). Otherwise a party being attacked by weapons guided by it may try to turn it off the hard way. ASAT is getting easier and cheaper all the time....

EGNOS
The article says that EGNOS "is a system of satellites and ground stations designed to increase the accuracy of the current GPS and GLONASS in Europe." Does it have anything to do with Galileo? If not, that sentence should be deleted.

No, EGNOS does not have anything to do with Galileo. I have deleted the paragraph.

EGNOS is the first step to an GNSS infrastructure of Europe. As such related to Galileo.


 * EGNOS will in it's third version also increase the accuracy of Galileo starting hopefully in 2024. --Rabenkind (talk) 17:12, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Blocking ability
"Since Galileo was designed to provide the highest possible precision (greater than GPS) to anyone, the US was concerned that an enemy could use Galileo signals in military strikes against the US and its allies (some weapons like missiles use GNSSs for guidance). The frequency initially chosen for Galileo would have made it impossible for the US to block the Galileo signals without also interfering with its own GPS signals. The US did not want to lose their GNSS capability with GPS while denying enemies the use of GNSS."

The article needs to be clear on how the US would go about blocking Galileo signals. Stefán Örvar Sigmundsson (talk) 23:41, 12 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with that!.--Bolzanobozen (talk) 11:42, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Brexit Effects
The UK (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL)) currently is responsible for constructing the payloads for the first 22 satellites. The tender process for the remaining satellites and payloads is currently underway, with SSTL bidding again.

While the UK will remain an ESA member, general rules mean that joint-funded missions between ESA and the EU (like Galileo) have to be sourced from EU countries. This situation becomes even more complicated because Galileo has direct funding from other nations - e.g. Switzerland is non-EU, but is ESA and was able to contribute the internal clocks.

However SSTL's construction of the payload is a huge security role, and it's distinctly uncertain whether the EU would be willing for a non-EU member to have such (possible) influence, especially given that by dint of constructing the payload, SSTL is heavily involved in dealing with the public regulated service - including the specific encrypted part for military/governmental use. Norway and Switzerland have not been granted access to this, despite security treaties.

Deserving of its own sub-section, or best suited to splits across multiple other paragraphs (bearing in mind that there isn't currently mention of the ongoing tender processes)?

Post-Brexit consequences on UK Space Mission participation

Nosebagbear (talk) 09:58, 1 September 2016 (UTC)


 * To anyone who might come across this and consider it - as noted 18 months ago, it's flaring up as a more imminent issue/threat now: bbc article on brexit/Gailelo concerns Nosebagbear (talk) 00:43, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

While brexit will lead to limited UK involment in the ongoing project, the article completley disregards the amount of input the UK has already had in the project and whitewashes their entire role. The agreement for the initial project as in the linked article was agreed by 27 of the 28 transport ministers, the hold out being Spain, who relented when some of their conditions were met, leading to unanimous approval. Tthe Uk has already directly invested £1 billion in Galileo and considerably more through contributions to the EU central Budget and ESA that have funded the ongoing work, along with a large part of the work was completed by UK companies, Ground Control was until recently run in Portsmouth and Surrey Satalite Technologies, that built most of the constelation, are a subsidury of Airbus UK. Brexit: UK wants £1bn back from EU if it is excluded from Galileo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.172.169.6 (talk) 12:03, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20060624004706/http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/galileo/doc/galileo_stf_ion2002.pdf to http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/energy_transport/galileo/doc/galileo_stf_ion2002.pdf

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External links modified (January 2018)
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GPS military (P and M codes) vs civilian (C/A code) signal accuracy
The article states that since Bill Clinton removed selective availability (SA) for the open/civilian GPS signals (C/A code), the military and civilian signals have the same accuracy. While it is true that SA intentionally degraded C/A code performance, even with SA off the signals have a lower bandwidth than the encrypted military signals (P and M) which means civilian signal accuracy still isn’t as good. Other enhancements used by civilian receivers to augment their GPS derived position may allow significant performance enhancements over plain C/A code but it is not correct to say that with the removal of SA the military and civilian signals are on par. 74.104.157.200 (talk) 01:07, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

units
Whats the thing with all the feed, inches, miles and lb? This is not an article closely related to one of three countries using those measures. It is an scientific article of a European project. It makes it so much harder to read. Who on earth is interested in satellite navigation and doesn't know SI-units? I suggest removing all non-SI units from running text. --Rabenkind (talk) 17:09, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

Vehicles = cars
Wikipedia says:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)#Receivers

"Effective 1 April 2018, all new vehicles sold in Europe must support eCall, an automatic emergency response system that dials 112 and transmits Galileo location data in the event of an accident".

Does this mean that if I buy a new car in Europe and pay for a preinstalled navigation, it also supports Galileo?

If I buy a car with built-in navigation in Europe, how do I know if it supports Galileo or not?

And if there is such support, is the navigation significantly better than without Galileo?

91.159.188.211 (talk) 22:27, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Accuracy
I changed the encrypted accuracy entry to 20 cm, as according to the sources linked to in this article, the accuracy is < 20cm, no mentioning of 1cm, however. SEA991 (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2023 (UTC)