India puts its money on Galileo

NEW DELHI: India will have a stake ofabout $300 million in the European Union''s prestigious Galileo global satellitesystem that will help EU challenge the US Global Positioning System for a futuremarket worth billions of dollars.The Indian contribution will add tothe $250 million pledged by China for Galileo under an accord signed at anEU-China summit in Beijing on Thursday. Indian''s decision to have astake in the project was taken during a visit to Brussels this week by ExternalAffairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, official sources in the EU said.AnEU delegation is expected to visit India next week to have further discussion,they said.Galileo would be one of the subjects to be discussed at anEU-India Summit in New Delhi scheduled for November-end and an agreement isexpected to be signed, they added.The Galileo Joint Undertaking isa venture between the EU and the European Space Agency and will joust, andlikely outperform, the American GPS. Galileo will be the Europeancontribution to the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Based on the sametechnological principles as the GPS and the Russian Glosnass system, Galileopresents a major advance in satellite navigation technology.Unlikethe American and Russian systems, which are under the control of the military,Galileo will be the first such system being specifically designed for civil andcommercial purposes and will be state-of-the-art, highly efficient and reliable.The Galileo technology, described as the "Internet" of globalnavigation, is used for air traffic control, mobile telephones and even policesurveillance, but inevitably has a military aspect.Galileo isdesigned to be inter-operable with other radio-navigation systems. This will bebeneficial to all users as they will be able to use more satellites forredundancy and higher accuracy. According to the European SpaceAgency, Galileo, scheduled to be operational by 2008, is based on aconstellation of 30 satellites and ground stations providing informationconcerning the positioning of users in many sectors such as transport (vehiclelocation, route searching, speed control, guidance systems, etc), socialservices (eg. aid for the disabled or elderly), the justice system and customsservices (location of suspects, border controls), public works (geographicalinformation systems), search and rescue systems, or leisure (direction-findingat sea or in the mountains, etc). The total development and launchcosts are put at around $3.77 billion, with running costs from 2008 onwards ofaround $257 million, the agency said.The Galileo Joint Undertakingwill be responsible for developing and validating the Galileo prototypes andpreparing the system''s deployment and operations.The European SpaceAgency said a market study suggests there will be 1.8 billion people who willseek navigation-by-satellite services by 2010, which would rise to 3.6 billionin 2020.However, Washington fears that it could interfere with Natomilitary frequencies. US officials hope that Europe''s proposed navigationsatellite system will be inter-operable with GPS. The US feels thatusers in Europe, North America, and around the world will benefit if Galileo isdesigned and built so that it is compatible and inter-operable with GPS.This requires, among other things, establishing the Galileotechnical parameters (for example, signal structure and radiofrequencyselection) so that GPS service is not adversely affected, they said.