Completely operational by 2020, the new geolocation system promises to be more accurate and help Europe's gross domestic product grow
Europe's Galileo GPS finally goes live. After 17 years of effort and 10 billion euros spent, the old continent is also launching its global positioning system into orbit. The satellites will allow Europe to detach itself in the next few years from the American technology.
In the next few years, not immediately in fact. According, in fact, to what the European Space Agency (ESA) says, Galileo will begin operating fully autonomously from 2020. Until that date, the European satellite navigation system will continue to rely on GPS (the US network) and Glonass, the Russian global positioning network. Compared to the American and Russian satellite systems, Galileo, always referring to what the ESA said, will have a higher level of precision thanks to the greater number of satellites used. Galileo will, in fact, be able to locate and track the position of an object within a range of just one meter.
How Galileo GPS Works
The European geolocation system will also be able to reach places, such as tunnels and roads, often difficult to penetrate. The service will be free and will be accessible from all smartphones or satellite platforms built with microchips compatible with the new European technology. At the moment among the phones ready to use Galileo we find only the Huawei Mate 9 and the Aquaris X5 Plus by BQ. Galileo will also integrate another important feature that promises to reduce rescue times: Search and Rescue (SAR). The technology will allow a person to be tracked within a 5-kilometer radius and in less than 10 minutes, unlike current systems that take up to 3 hours in a 10-kilometer range. With Galileo, Europe hopes to cut itself a major competitive advantage by offering an alternative and more accurate system, considering that 10 percent of Europe's gross domestic product depends on satellite navigation. A market that could reach 30 percent by 2030.