This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Two satellites meant to form part of a European-run GPS navigational network have been launched into the wrong orbit in a blow for the programme.



European space officials say they are investigating whether the inaccurate deployment will complicate their efforts to develop the Galileo system, which would rival the American-run GPS network.

The European Space Agency and launch company Arianespace said the satellites – meant to be the fifth and sixth in the network – ended up in off-target orbits after being launched on Friday from Kourou, French Guiana, aboard a Soyuz rocket.

Saturday’s agency statement did not explain whether their orbital paths could be corrected.

Arianespace said the satellites settled into a lower elliptical orbit instead of the circular one intended, and initial analysis suggested the mishap occurred during the flight phase and involved the Fregat upper stage of Soyuz.

“Our aim is of course to fully understand this anomaly,” said Stephane Israel, Arianespace chairman and chief executive. “While it is too early to determine the exact causes, we would like to offer our sincere excuses to ESA and the European commission for this orbital injection that did not meet expectations.”

Israel said Arianespace along with customer ESA and the commission would create an independent panel to investigate what caused the inaccurate deployment and to develop corrective actions so Soyuz launches could resume.

The European Union hopes to have its 30-satellite Galileo navigation network operating fully by 2020. The Prague-based programme oversaw the launch of its first two satellites in 2011, two more in 2012 and the two that went up on Friday.

Jean-Yves Le Gall, president of the French space agency CNES, said the investigation still needed to determine precisely how far off course the satellites were. He said ESA experts in Toulouse, France, and Darmstadt, Germany, were calculating whether small motors inside the satellites would be strong enough to push them into the correct orbit.

Le Gall said the investigation would take “several days to understand what has happened. And then we’ll see about the possible consequences on the launch calendar,” he said, referring to plans to launch more satellites in coming months.

He called the Galileo navigation network “a very complex programme, and even if we have some failures that’s unfortunately part of the life of operations.”

If the two satellites cannot be pushed to the correct altitude above the earth, he said, subsequent satellites would have to take up the slack.

The programme has faced other delays and operational hiccups. ESA officials said on Wednesday that they had to reduce the strength of another Galileo satellite’s signal because of unspecified problems.

The agency says it hopes Galileo will provide greater precision for satellite navigation systems than the GPS system already used worldwide to pinpoint locations and plot routes.