GNSS

UP Aerospace launches suborbital flight to test GNSS payloads

Colorado-based UP Aerospace launched its 21st suborbital space flight from the world’s first purpose-built commercial spaceport occurred at 7:09 a.m. local time Tuesday (Oct. 1, 2024).

UP Aerospace partnered with NASA’s Flight Opportunities program on its latest flight, SL-15, which featured its SpaceLoft rocket shuttling a variety of payloads to sub-orbital heights.

One payload was a suite of multiGNSS receivers from NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program, the European Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, and their contractors Fraunhofer and Qascom. Determining the scope of interoperability was of paramount importance to the flight test, the results of which will be presented to the International Committee on GNSS (ICG) as part of the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS).

NASA’s Flight Opportunities program demonstrates technologies developed by industry, academia, and NASA and other government scientists through testing with a variety of commercial flight providers. spaceportamerica.com

ESA FutureNAV Industry Day 2025

The first FutureNAV Industry Day, on 18 February 2025, will bring together European stakeholders in satellite navigation to explore the future of positioning, navigation and timing technologies. This gathering will spotlight emerging opportunities and foster a network of European companies in the PNT and GNSS sector.

In 2022, the new programme FutureNAV was launched to consolidate these efforts. Under this initiative, two first missions were approved by the ESA Council at Ministerial Level: LEOPNT, which aims to demonstrate the potential of navigation satellites in low Earth orbit; and Genesis, a mission that will combine four geodetic techniques in one satellite to contribute to a highly improved reference frame of Earth. www.esa.int

USSF field commands successfully launch GPS III

U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command and Space Operations Command executed an accelerated timeline to meet a specific warfighter need through a Rapid Response Trailblazer launch. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launched this National Security Space Launch mission with a GPS III Space Vehicle aboard, named SV-07, Dec. 16, from Space Launch Complex 40, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida.

The mission successfully achieved a complex effort across multiple Space Force organizations to pull an existing GPS III satellite from storage, accelerate integration and launch vehicle readiness, and rapidly process for launch.

The success of the launch proved a two-fold concept of operations. For SSC, Assured Access to Space successfully demonstrated and highlighted its agility in partnership with industry to respond to changing national needs by executing an NSSclass launch in less than five months.

For SpOC, the event not only marked a first for Mission Delta 31 as the SV lead but also demonstrated flexibility and responsiveness by reducing the typical six-month SV pre-launch processing timeline to approximately three months. Similar to the flexibility with launch partners for AATS, this also included coordination with MD 31 and Lockheed Martin in Colorado to process SV-07 out of storage within the reduced timescale.

This launch was the first exercise of trailblazer capabilities for the GPS constellation. www.ssc.spaceforce.mil