ESA Galileo: EU selects CGI to support Galileo Commercial Service Initiative

CGI has a long track record of supporting the European space industry, which includes having delivered the Constellation Control Facility that controls Galileo's 30 satellites, as well as developing software that underpins the missions of more than 200 individual satellites.

CGI has been awarded a contract to build the core infrastructure for the first demonstrator for the Galileo Commercial Service, part of the emerging European Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).

The contract was awarded by the European Commission Directorate General for Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR).

When operational, Galileo satellites will take satellite navigation to a whole new level. Users will be able to rely on the service for their most critical positioning applications, especially when used in conjunction with other systems, such as GPS.

It will be especially useful in urban areas, on mountains and at high latitudes where GPS-only coverage can be intermittent.

The demonstrator application will show how Galileo can provide positioning services that are accurate to the centimetre, as well as its innovative position-authentication services could lead to further commercial uses.

Once complete, the demonstrator will be made available to other GNSS service providers to test across vertical markets, including transport, insurance and personal mobility.

The Galileo Commercial Service was introduced with the goal of creating a potential revenue source to support the future maintenance of EU satellite navigation services.

It provides added value to the Galileo Open Service with the expectation that new services will be based on its encrypted and guaranteed signal, which delivers a higher data throughput rate and increased positioning accuracy.

"The Commercial Service has many added benefits beyond its original designation as a potential revenue source for the Galileo system," said Steve Smart, vice president of the EU wing of the US corporation, Space, Defense and National Security at CGI in the UK.

"It will maximise the program's ability to provide the best navigation services possible to the public and commercial sectors, and will create economic value for the EU in general. We are proud to say we are playing a key role in this innovative process."

The European Commission DG ENTR is working in partnership with the European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European Space Agency, in collaboration with member states.

The objective is to provide the operational Commercial Service, and its associated exploitation model, in the following years.

CGI has a long track record of supporting the European space industry, which includes having delivered the Constellation Control Facility that controls Galileo's 30 satellites, as well as developing software that underpins the missions of more than 200 individual satellites.

NASA Curiosity Rover: Ancient Mars Lake Could Have Supported Life

Mastcam mosaic of the Yellowknife Bay formation. This is a view from the base of an exposed section up through Sheepbed, Gillespie Lake, and basal Glenelg members. 

Locations of drill holes and Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (A PXS) measurements are shown. Image released Dec. 9, 2013. Credit: Science/AAAS



The lake could have potentially supported a class of microbes called chemolithoautotrophs, which obtain energy by breaking down rocks and minerals.

Here on Earth, chemolithoautotrophs are commonly found in habitats beyond the reach of sunlight, such as caves and hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

US Rely on Russian Soyuz Progress programme to support ISS crew

Progress, a Russian cargo spacecraft, Progress M-06M, lifted off toward the International Space Station at 19:35 Moscow time [15:35 GMT] on Wednesday, the Russian space agency Roscosmos said.

It was launched from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan on a Soyuz-U booster rocket. It separated 10 minutes later and successfully entered the designated orbit.

The space freighter will deliver fuel, oxygen, scientific equipment and video and photo equipment to the ISS, as well as food, water and personal items for the crew.

The spaceship is to dock with the space station on July 2 at 20:55 Moscow time [16:55 GMT].

Preparations have already been made for the module's arrival. In early June, Russia's Mission Control readjusted the ISS orbit, raising it by 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) to ensure the best conditions for the docking of the Soyuz TMA-19 manned spacecraft and the Progress M-06M.

On Monday, the ISS crew moved the Soyuz TMA-19, which docked with the Zvezda module on June 18, to the Rassvet research module in a 24-minute maneuver to make room for the Progress M-06M.

Re-inventing the wheel to support human progress

While the evolution from the Neolithic solid stone wheel with a single hole for an axle to the sleek wheels of today’s racing bikes can be seen as the result of human ingenuity, it also represents how animals, including humans, have come to move more efficiently and quicker over millions of years on Earth, according to a Duke University engineer (our spokes person!).

Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, argues that just as the design of wheels became lighter with fewer spokes over time, and better at distributing the stresses of hitting the ground, animals have evolved as well to move better on Earth. In essence, over millions of years, animals such as humans developed the fewest “spokes,” or legs, as the most efficient method for carrying an increasing body weight and height more easily.

“This prediction of how wheels should emerge in time is confirmed by the evolution of wheel technology,” Bejan said. “For example, during the development of the carriage, solid disks were slowly replaced by wheels with tens of spokes.”

The advantage of spokes is that they distribute stresses uniformly while being lighter and stronger than a solid wheel. “In contrast with the spoke, the solid wheel of antiquity was stressed unevenly, with a high concentration of stresses near the contact with the ground, and zero stresses on the upper side,” Bejan said. “The wheel was large and heavy, and most of its volume did not support the load that the
vehicle posed on the axle.

“If you view animal movement as a ‘rolling’ body, two legs, swinging back and forth, perform the same function of an entire wheel-rim assembly,” Bejan said. “They also do it most efficiently — like one wheel with two spokes with the stresses flowing unobstructed and uniformly through each spoke. The animal body is both wheel and vehicle for horizontal movement.”

Bejan’s analysis was published early online in the American Journal of Physics. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

“An animal leg is shaped like a column because it facilitates the flow of stresses between two points — like the foot and hip joint, or paw and shoulder,” Bejan said. “In the example of the Neolithic stone wheel, the flow of stresses is between the ground and the whole wheel.”

Bejan believes that the constructal theory of design in nature (www.constructal.org), which he started describing in 1996, predicts these changes in the wheel and animal movement. The theory states that for a design (an animal, a river basin) to persist in time, it must evolve to move more freely through its environment.

Since animal locomotion is basically a falling-forward process, Bejan argues that an increase in height predicts an increase in speed. For a centipede, each leg represents a point of contact with ground, which limits the upward movement of the animal. As animals have fewer contacts with ground, they can rise up higher with each stride.

“The constructal theory shows us this forward-falling movement is dictated by the natural wheel phenomenon, which is required for the minimal amount of effort expended for a certain distance traveled,” Bejan said.

An earlier analysis by Bejan showed that larger human swimmers are faster because the wave they create while swimming is larger and thus carries them forward faster.

While wheel-like movement evolved naturally, it also describes what Bejan likes to call “nature’s gear box.” Humans have two basic speeds, Bejan said — walking and running. A running human gets taller, or higher off the ground, with each stride, which increases his speed.

A horse has three speeds — walk, trot and gallop.

“The horse increases its speed by increasing the height from which it falls during each cycle,” Bejan said. “Then, from the trot to the gallop, the body movement changes abruptly such that the height of jump increases stepwise for each stride. Nature developed not only wheel-like movement but also mechanisms for changing speeds.”

Russian Companies Move to Support Bulgarian Nuclear Energy Project

Bulgaria's nuclear plant project in Belene following the withdrawal of German utility RWE, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko said Friday.

"Russia wants to see the project continue and we are currently holding constructive dialogue with the Bulgarian government to find a fair corporate solution allowing us to secure the further development of Belene," Shmatko said after intergovernmental energy talks in Sofia.

He said he had spoken to the Bulgarian government of "the interest of Russian companies to become shareholders in Belene."

RWE's withdrawal from the 10-billion-euro (14.6-billion-dollar) project for a new nuclear power plant on the Danube prompted Bulgaria to seek new investors to take up the German utility's 49-percent stake in the project.

Severe shortage of funding for the 2,000-megawatt plant also made Bulgaria's government consider selling part of its own 51-percent share in Belene, according to Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov.

"The entry of new investors in the project under mutually acceptable conditions is of interest to Bulgaria. The Russian side, on the other hand, is interested in securing the development of the project ... So the participation of Russian companies as shareholders is an option," Traikov said Friday.

Traikov did not however say when the government would call the international tender for new investors for the plant, for which it had already chosen a builder -- the Russian company Atomstroyexport.

Neither Traikov nor Shmatko would say how big a stake the Russian investors might take up.

Shmatko meanwhile said Russia was ready to provide Bulgaria with a government loan to help it fund the project.

Bulgaria's new right-wing government had refused to offer the necessary state guarantees for the credit and Shmatko said Friday that Russia understood Bulgaria's reluctance to take up more debt amid the current economic and financial crisis.

But he underlined the importance of the project for both Bulgaria and Russia and said it was necessary to overcome "the current uncertainties" surrounding Belene's future.

Spacenet - connecting remote location

The space-based network connectivity provider is ramping up multiple levels of support, enabling resellers to tailor services to meet the needs of customers in some of the most remote locations.

Spacenet, a provider of network connectivity services via satellites orbiting Earth, has launched a new services program designed to give its channel partners an additional revenue stream and its end users better support during critical need.

Spacenet, whose ConnexStar Reseller channel program is aimed at the small- to med-sized enterprise market, developed the Enhanced Support Program after noticing that certain industries were in need of higher touch support services, said Steve D’Argenio, vice president of small-to-medium enterprise sales at Spacenet.

“Some of our higher-end resellers were starting to have a demand, especially in certain industries, in which our standard support services didn’t meet their critical needs,” he said. “The typical response time for standard support is three days, but in certain industries such as oil and gas, for example, there are critical services needs that require immediate support.”

An oil platform in the ocean is one example, he said. “If you’ve got a fire on the rig, you need support immediately, not three days from now.”

The Enhanced Support Program, available now, offers two levels of service levels. Both offer dedicated customer engineering support from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern time, dedicated customer network engineering path escalation during non-business hours, access to network utilization reports and a remote annual network health check.

The Silver level includes customer network changes within eight hours, a 10-day remote dispatch service and a 24-month warranty on all hardware.

The Gold level offers customer network changes within two hours, next-business-day provisioning of voice and fax lines, same-day maintenance dispatch service and a 36-month warranty on all hardware.

Channel partners are able to resell the enhanced services as an add-on service to their ConnectStar customers, D’Argenio said.

“The key to this program is this really shows the evolution of how far satellite service has come,” he said. “It can do anything terrestrial networking services can do. It can be the primary connection for any and all applications.

“A few years ago, we wouldn’t even be having a conversation about different service levels. Today, however, it’s a whole new story,” he said.