Sunday January 08, 2006

Galileo: Europe's 3.8b euro stellar gamble

channelnewsasia.com :

By embarking on its own colossal satellite navigation project, Europe is making a 3.8 billion-euro (4.5 billion-dollar) gamble that it can beat the US at its own game and move positioning technology from military to civilian hands.

Satellite navigation technology enables a train or truck driver to know the precise position of their vehicle at any time, a ship to chart its course or a motorist to find their way around an unknown city. The technology also has many applications in areas where precise topography is vital, such as oil and mine exploration, laying oil pipelines, electrifying rural areas and the positioning of telecom towers.

Galileo will both compete with and complement GPS (the US Global Positioning System), which was originally developed for military targeting and positioning but was made available freely available to civilians in 1993. Galileo is designed to deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to the meter (yard) range, greater than that of GPS, thanks to the near-perfect timekeeping of its atomic clocks.

(2006-01-08 22:29:17 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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