Spaceborne GNSS and the GIOVE a satellite

The first part of this presentation describes recent applications of GNSS in a spaceborne context. GPS has been widely used in low Earth orbit for assisting operational tracking of satellites, planning manoeuvres, and position-stamping images, as well as for scientific applications. On-going work at SSTL is looking at miniaturisation of satellite hardware, attitude determination using GPS, and operation outside the GPS constellation. GNSS has also been proven to be useful from space as an innovative tool for remote sensing of the atmosphere, sea, ice and land. The second part gives an overview of SSTL's GIOVE-A satellite mission after one successful year in orbit. The precursor Galileo satellite is currently broadcasting prototype Galileo signals to the world in preparation for the future European satellite navigation system. The primary payloads, experimentation and results are summarised along with information about secondary payloads and experiments.