NEWSBRIEFS – Galileo update

German government makes funds available for Galileo development work

The German federal government will provide funds to the tune of 2.5 million Euros for research and development work in Rostock on the European satellitebased navigation system Galileo.

In the course of a visit to the Rostockbased technology company RST, Wolfgang Tiefensee, the Federal Minister responsible for promoting the industries of the eastern federal states that used to make up the German Democratic Republic, said that the groundwork R&D in the field of aerospace technology carried out by companies in Mecklenburg West-Pomerania was of an outstanding quality. Substantial funds would now be invested in Galileo application research, he added.

Within the context of research undertaken by RST, four transmitters will be set up in the port of Rostock capable of giving off Galileo signals. During the test phase the signals, which allow the receiver to pinpoint the position of the sender exactly, will be picked up by a ship of the ferry line Scandlines. www.heise.de

UK to invest another £21m in Galileo

The UK government will invest another £21 million in Galileo GNSS. Firms in the UK are already at the forefront of the £2.4 billion scheme to provide Europe with its own independent system by 2010. Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling said the boost to the Galileo project was “good news for British jobs, British technology and science”. Unveiling the extra cash, Mr Darling said: “The Galileo project has real potential to develop groundbreaking technology leading to more accurate incar navigation and new systems for the emergency services to locate missing or injured people.” www.thisislondon.co.uk

Galileo and the PRN codes hack

Professor Psiaki has said that they wanted the PRN codes of Galileo to begin testing receivers, which would work with the Galileo satellites. Psiaki was working on a receiver intended to work with both GPS and its European civil successor, which together will considerably expand today’s global navigation satellite systems. He and his team hit headlines when they cracked the pseudo-random numbers (PRNs) codes of Galileo.

For testing the receivers he wanted the codes and despite requests to the Galileo folks, Psiaki couldn’t get the codes the team needed to test the receiver. Psiaki and his team cracked the PRN codes and published the codes and the details of how they did it on April 1. Within a couple of days other researchers had downloaded the codes and begun using them. “Everyone knows this is not the final version,” said Psiaki, “but we can test a lot of difficult and important stuff with this signal.”

Despite cracking and publishing the codes, Psiaki really doesn’t want anything bad to happen to Galileo as a result. “I and a lot of people want Galileo to succeed,” he says. “But we don’t want to be shut out.” www.theinquirer.net