The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) released its 2012 State of the Satellite Industry Report. Globally, 2011 revenues for the satellite industry totalled USD 177.3 billion, a growth of 5 percent. This is the fi fteenth year that SIA has commissioned the Futron Corporation to conduct this annual survey.

Platform for innovation project Ford has selected the Nokia Location Platform to leverage Nokia’s global location content, including NAVTEQ Map, as well as scaleable cloud services and APIs. This complete solution offers a fast, easy and cost-effective path to create innovative and differentiated location products.

On a dare, Texas college researchers hacked into and hijacked a drone of the US Homeland Security before the eyes of the offi cials operating it. Using a technique called ‘spoofi ng’ where a signal from hackers imitates the one sent to the drone’s on-board GPS, the researchers managed to take control of a small but powerful drone in mid-air. And the hijacking was just for a $1,000 wager.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has published a contract notice in the Offi cial Journal of the European Union inviting operators to bid for the provision of EGNOS services over the 2014-2021period. This contract will consist in operating, maintaining and upgrading the EGNOS system infrastructure, and ensuring the continuous and safe provision of the three services offered by EGNOS.
The new EGNOS service provision contract is planned to be awarded in 2013 and is aimed at guaranteeing the provision of EGNOS services for 8 years starting on the 1st of January 2014, without service interruption.

Spectracom has announced its new L1+L2 dual frequency 32-channel multi-GNSS simulator, the GSG-62. It offers multiple frequency band operation, multiple GNSS constellation simulation, and expansion capability for more frequency bands and channels.

VisionMap Ltd has announced that its A3 digital aerial camera imagery is now supported by Intergraph’s LPS photogrammetry software. This new compatibility provides LPS users the ability to perform stereo compilation with A3 imagery for mapping applications.

China successfully launched the remotesensing satellite Yaogan XIIII recently from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northern province of Shanxi. The satellite was carried into space aboard a Long March 4B carrier rocket which blasted off at 3:06 p.m. Beijing time, according to the center.

Nigeria is to switch to the satellite based navigation system also known as the Performance Based Navigation (PBN) soon. This is coming as airline operators and pilots have been urged to key into the satellite based navigation system.

The latest Apple iPhone will be the first among cellphone manufacturers outside Russia to use both the global navigation satellite systems – American GPS and Russian GLONASS. Russia is working on promoting the use of the GLONASS, an in order to do so it is planning to levy heavy import duties in the country on the Phones not using GLONASS.

Since its certification for use in managing air traffic and other securitycritical applications in 2011, EGNOS – Europe’s augmentation system for GPS – now enables new applications for precise and reliable satellite navigation. To promote EGNOS, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) is offering a special prize for the most promising idea using the system.