Galileo is one of the world's leading GNSS systems, which was launched by the European Union in 2003 and is expected to be fully completed by 2024.
Like other GNSS systems, it allows anyone with a receiver to obtain their position. Its accuracy is estimated at about 4m horizontally and 8m in altitude.
It has been announced that the constellation will eventually consist of 30 satellites.
The average orbit (distance between the satellite and the earth) of the Galileo satellites is 23,200 km. However, they are in three different orbital planes.
What’s the history of galileo ?
The beginnings of Galileo date back to 1999, but the project was officially launched on 26 May 2003 with the signing of the agreement between the European Union and the European Space Agency. At the time, the main objective of this project was to be able to move away from the American GPS positioning system in the long term for obvious strategic and geopolitical reasons. We should mention the fact that it was stated that the project would be solely civilian and had no military dimension.
The first test satellite launches took place in 2005 and 2008. Then the first satellites in operational configuration were launched in 2014. Finally, in March 2020, 26 satellites were launched, of which 22 were operational. The service itself has been operational since 2016, but it has had its share of problems and malfunctions, such as the breakdown in 2019, due to a failure of 25 of the 26 satellites, which lasted several days and greatly discredited the project.
Specific characteristics of Galileo: let's go further!
Galileo broadcasts its signals on 3 different bands: E1, E5 and E6.
The satellites are distributed over 3 orbital planes inclined at 56% of the equatorial plane. Each orbit has 8 active satellites and 2 back-up satellites.
Galileo will also offer a more in-depth service called the High Accuracy Service. This service will use the two frequency bands of the "classic" open service plus an additional band from 1260 to 1300 MHz. The accuracy of this service will be of the order of 20cm horizontally and 40 cm vertically.
