The Australian government announced last week that it intends to invest around $12 million in a two-year program to help improve global satellite positioning in the country. The funding will go towards testing the use of satellite-based augmentation systems (SBAS) in the country. These systems are designed to provide instant, accurate positioning when combined with navigational satellite constellations.

We wrote previously about how Australia has historically had some minor accuracy issues with GPS, and even had to issue a correction late last year to account for inaccurate coordinates due to drifting. This project represents Australia’s first foray into the satellite positioning sector, and it has the potential to provide quite a few benefits to the country, and will be available for civilians as well as military and commercial organizations.

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The European Space Agency successfully launched two new Galileo satellites into orbit last Friday from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. The two satellites took off at around 2:08 GMT on September 11 and were numbers 9 and 10 in the constellation. This most recent launch is the second of four launches scheduled for 2015 and brought the total number of Galileo satellites in orbit to ten. read more

Last weekend, China successfully launched two new navigational satellites for its BeiDou Navigational Satellite System (BDS). The second successful launch this year, these two satellites will become the 18th and 19th satellites in the navigational constellation. The satellites were launched from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southern China on Saturday. read more

photo by ULA | Atlas V Rocket

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) is slowly but surely working towards upgrading the GPS constellation with yesterday’s successful launch of a new GPS IIF satellite. This $245 million satellite is the 10th in the IIF series and will replace a 19-year-old satellite that was past its life-expectancy. read more

Last August, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched two Galileo satellites into the wrong orbit. It made a lot of news because they weren’t just a little bit off–the satellites were roughly 2,000 miles off target. Talk about an ‘oops’ moment. Here at GPS Tracklog, we followed the developments as they happened, so you probably remember that both satellites were eventually successfully maneuvered to slightly better orbits.

I have to admit that I read a lot more about the satellites than I actually wrote about here on the blog. At the time, the only information was available about the incorrect orbits was likely literally written by rocket scientists, and finding ways to translate (and even understand) exactly what was happening was a little challenging. So, now that everything is mostly in the clear, the ESA has released a document explaining in non-rocket science terms exactly what happened and how it was fixed. read more