Next Two Galileo Satellites to be Launched Mar 27
The European Space Agency has announced that the next two Galileo satellites are on schedule to be launched March 27. The first experimental Galileo satellite was launched in late 2005 and the second was launched in April 2008. Both were decommissioned in Summer 2012. The first pair of so-called in-orbit validation satellites were launched in October 2011 and the second pair was launched in October 2012. The first pair of fully operational Galileo satellites were launched in August 2014 but a launcher failure inserted them into an incorrect orbit.
With six satellites currently in orbit, 24 more must be launched before the constellation will be complete. In the meantime, researchers must use hardware or software simulators for experiments and investigations of the complete system. One example is the SatNav Toolbox for MATLAB produced by GPSoft:
