The European Space Agency set to launch two new satellites … – RTVE

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The Soyuz-FG rocket which will be put into orbit the Galileo satellites. ESA

JAVIER PEDREIRA ‘WICHO’

Everything is ready at the spaceport of Kourou in French Guiana for a rocket Soyuz Fregat launch this Thursday at 12:31:14 UTC two Galileo satellite system , the European version of the

American GPS positioning systems or Russian Glonass. Below are the first two to be launched from the European Space Agency called for ‘ Full Operational Capability ‘ and join the four group ‘Orbit Validation’ already in operation.

With these four validation satellites, ESA found that everything worked properly and served also to check whether any needed change in the satellites ‘standard’.

In fact, they orbit the Galileo system and work though without redundancy desired for the possible failure of one of the satellites, so Galileo will not be considered fully operational until probably 2019 , as more satellites are incorporated.

The two that are about to be thrown enter service in autumn , after the relevant evidence, and is expected to be followed later this year by satellites 7 and 8 of the system; the idea is to pace Release 4 or 6 satellites per year to have the complete system.

The Galileo satellites system orbit the Earth at 23,616 miles altitude , and each satellite will take about 14 hours to turn this. In total the system will have a total of 30 satellites in orbit, a figure that includes three parts.

The Galileo system offers two types of signals, one free of charge, with a approximate accuracy one meter when setting the position of the receiver , and a more accurate will be reserved for those who pay for and use it for military purposes.

The accuracy will approximate the Galileo satellites is one meter

Of course, Galileo needs specific to him receptors, so current GPS receivers do not receive their signals , although most likely soon start to appear in the recipient market able to use Galileo signals in addition to GPS and Glonass.

lifetime of the satellite system is calculated in twelve Years , and this is probably the biggest question mark hanging over the future of the system, because not only it is put in place, but keep it going, which depend largely on the political will to do .