European Space Agency Galileo Sat Nav System Launch — The £4.4 Billion Brussels Space Fiasco

Arianespace, the company responsible for the launch, said the satellites had been placed 'on a lower orbit than expected'. The satellites, Doresa and Milena, were fired into space on Russian-made Soyuz rocket from French Guiana yesterday, pictured left and right. It is part of a £4.4bn project, funded by the European Union, to provide Europe with an alternative in case of signal failure on US global positioning system. Space officials are investigating whether the inaccurate deployment will complicate their efforts to build the new Galileo satellite navigation system.

Two satellites being used in a £4.4bn European project to develop a satellite navigation system which rivals the American GPS network have gone into the wrong orbit.

Arianespace, the company responsible for the launch, said the satellites 'had been placed on a lower orbit than expected', after being fired into space yesterday on a Russian-made Soyuz rocket from French Guiana. 

The European Space Agency said space officials are now investigating whether the mistake will complicate their efforts to develop the publicly-funded Galileo satellite navigation system.

It is not clear whether the satellites will be able to work properly in the different orbit, nor whether the orbits are now able to be corrected.

The satellites, Doresa and Milena, were fired into space after a 24-hour delay caused by bad weather. They are the fifth and sixth satellites to be launched for the ESA’s geo-positioning network.

The first two were launched in 2011, followed by another pair in 2012. The latest two satellites were already more than one year behind schedule.

The statement did not explain the difference between the satellites' intended orbits and the one in which it was placed.  Space officials are now investigating whether the inaccurate deployment will complicate efforts to create the new £4.4bn Galileo satellite navigation system 

The £4.4bn project, funded and owned by the European Union, is intended to provide Europe with an independent alternative in case of signal failure on the existing U.S. global positioning system or on Russia’s Glonass system.

The project will apparently create 15,000 to 20,000 jobs within the EU, according to the ESA.

In total, the Galileo network aims to have 30 operating satellites by 2017. Arianespace recently announced it would launch a further 12 satellites from the start of next year.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French space agency CNES, said the investigation still needed to determine precisely how far off course the satellites were.

He said European Space Agency experts in Toulouse, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, were calculating whether small motors inside the satellites would be strong enough to push them into the correct orbit.

Mr Le Gall said the investigation would take 'several days to understand what has happened'. He said only then would they be able to see the possible consequences on the launch calendar.

He called the Galileo navigation network 'a very complex programme' and said failures were 'unfortunately part of the life of operations'.

If the two satellites cannot be pushed to the correct altitude above the earth, he said, subsequent satellites launched would have to take up the slack.

The programme has faced other delays and operational hiccups. European Space Agency officials said on Wednesday they had to reduce the strength of another Galileo satellite's signal because of unspecified problems.

 Culled From Daily Mail