EGNOSerrie
Geo- for grown-ups
 
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EGNOSerrie

 
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Wildlifewriter
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Joined: 04 Aug 2005
Posts: 948
Location: Norn Iron

PostPosted: Thu Aug 11, 2005 4:45 pm    Post subject: EGNOSerrie Reply with quote



Reflections on a strange and wonderful SBAS system...

It's operational at last. Well, no - in fact it isn't really operational, or to put this another way: it isn't really operational - but it nearly is.

Sort of.

On the 28th of July, the European Space Agency handed over control of the EGNOS system to its full time "owner" - the European Satellite Services Provider or ESSP for short (as if there weren't enough acronyms to circle the Earth already) who are responsible for its day-to-day running.

At this juncture, staff at ESA and ESSP did what you would expect any European project managers and engineers to do during the handover of a hugely complicated and expensive system...

They've all gone on holiday for a month.

The system is now in its Initial Operations Phase (IOP, needless to say) which will last until the end of 2006. Or a bit longer, if things don't go well. The IOP is supposed to culminate in EGNOS being tested and certified for critical safety applications. Why it wasn't tested and certified for this purpose during the testing programme, is anyone's guess.

But not to worry - the system is up at last and running in accordance with the agreed technical standards, so at least us hikers and geocachers can use it for our less-than-safety-critical applications, right?

Not exactly.

There are one or two tiny problems which remain to be sorted out. Far from being the tiniest is the fact that not all the monitoring ground stations have been put in place yet - which means that we don't get all of the corrections for all of the satellites, all of the time.

Then there's the outstanding issue about the two versions of the "industry standard" for SBAS operation. The European Space Agency has one version, which differs somewhat from the other standard - that's the one (rather unfortunately) being used by the people who design and make GPS receivers.

But these (we're told) are mere technical details: the main thing is that EGNOS is working at last...

... when it will be working properly is another matter entirely.



-Wlw.
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