GIOVE-A already five years in orbit

GIOVE-A satellite – the first prototype of Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system – is still working well after five years in space.

The first ‘Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element’, GIOVE-A, was launched on 28 December 2005 by a Soyuz rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan, carrying a prototype rubidium atomic clock designed for the Galileo constellation. Our blog reported about the launch of GIOVE-A here.

It was joined on 27 April 2008 by GIOVE-B, equipped with an ultra-precise passive hydrogen maser design as well as a second rubidium clock. Operational Galileo satellites will carry both clock designs for maximum reliability.

“Both satellites had a design lifetime of 27 months each,” said Valter Alpe, managing GIOVE activities for ESA. “It is a pleasant surprise, therefore, to have GIOVE-A still fully operational after 60 months in orbit. GIOVE-B, meanwhile, is showing no sign of problems after 33 months in space.

ESA and prime contractor Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd of the UK completed GIOVE-A extremely quickly. From the contract signing in July 2003 to launch took less than two and a half years.

ESA and the European Commission needed to begin using the radio frequencies the International Telecommunications Union had provisionally allocated to Galileo to secure their future access.

“GIOVE-A made it to orbit ahead of the ITU deadline, then began to broadcast Europe’s first navigation signal-from-space on 12 January 2006,” continued Valter. “This represented one major goal of the two GIOVE missions.”

“Europe has not used such orbits too often in the past, so both satellites were checking the radiation environment,” added Stefano Binda, Systems Performance Engineer for GIOVE. “We needed to perform in-orbit testing of the purely European atomic clocks at the core of the Galileo system and an experimental version of the global Galileo ground mission segment could begin trials once we had the GIOVE signals-from-space.

The Galileo Control Center (GCC) is located at the premises of the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, Germany.