Researchers from the Geophysics Laboratory at the University of Luxembourg tracked the first signals from a Galileo in-orbit-validation satellite.

On Saturday, 10 December, one of the two Galileo satellites, which were launched on 21   October, started broadcasting its navigation signals.  At 06:02 Coordinated Universal Time, the first signals were recorded by a special receiver operated for research purposes at the University’s campus on Kirchberg.  For the moment the satellite (PRN11), denoted as E11 below, is broadcasting a pilot signal in the E1/L1 frequency band (1575.42 MHz). The signals cannot yet be used for navigation as the on-board systems are still being tested.

The Galileo system is Europe’s Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and counterpart to the ubiquitous US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS) and the less well-known Russian GLONASS system. The two Galileo satellites in orbit are the first two of the Galileo IOV constellation, to which two more satellites of the same design will be added during 2012. These four satellites will then be used during this IOV phase to validate Galileo’s precise positioning and timing capabilities.

Professor Norman Teferle and Mr Dmitry Sidorov work on GNSS at the Geophysics Laboratory. Of particular interest are the benefits for high-precision applications in, for example, geophysics, by adding GLONASS and Galileo measurements to the widely used GPS ones.

The GNSS data from 10 December were processed using scientific GNSS quality control software.  

Photo: The first Galileo in-orbit-validation satellite

 © ESA