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———————————————————————- 20 Feb 12. A major milestone in the Galileo European Navigation Satellite System’s development and deployment programme was achieved on the evening of 14th February 2012, when Septentrio and QinetiQ, working in close partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and their industrial partners, achieved the world’s first successful reception of the encrypted Galileo Public Regulated Service (PRS) signal from the first Galileo satellites (launched in October 2011). The signal was received on the Galileo PRS Test User Receiver (PRS-TUR) jointly developed by Septentrio and QinetiQ under an ESA contract. For the reception test, the receiver was installed in the Galileo Control Centre in Fucino, Italy and operated by technical experts from Telespazio and ESA. This milestone builds on a number of previous major Septentrio/QinetiQ achievements including:
• First ever laboratory demonstration of the PRS signal acquisition and tracking in QinetiQ (Malvern, UK, 2006)
• Successful RF compatibility test between a Galileo payload and the PRS-TUR (Portsmouth, UK, 2010)
• Successful Galileo end-to-end system test including the Galileo Ground Mission Segment (GMS) and its key management facilities, satellite and PRS-TUR (Rome, Italy, 2011)
Septentrio and QinetiQ are proud to be a key, long-term contributor to the Galileo Programme, working closely with ESA, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) and European industrial partners since 2003.
22 Feb 12. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. announced the successful demonstration of an early prototype of its Due Regard Radar on a manned aircraft. The Due Regard Radar is a company-funded system that supports GA-ASI’s overall radar-based airborne sense-and-avoid architecture for its Predator® B UAS. Installed on a surrogate Twin Otter aircraft, the Due Regard Radar’s first successful flight test occurred October 17, 2011 in California off the coast of San Diego and in Borrego Springs. During the test, the radar system, which is based upon an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar, successfully detected “intruder” King Air aircraft encroaching upon the Twin Otter’s airspace. The purpose of the test was to collect data for algorithm development, laying the groundwork for additional manned flight testing. Following the completion of manned flight tests, testing will begin on unmanned aircraft. Development work will continue until the radar has achieved a technology readiness level of 7, tentatively setting the stage for customer introduction in 2015. Long-term plans include rolling out the capability to other aircraft in the Predator/Gray Eagle™ UAS family.
22 Feb 12. In a keynote session at the International Wireless Communications Expo, Raytheon Company declared that the right technical model for a mobile broadband public safety network is open architecture, non-proprietary, standards-based and interoperable, all of which can be found in Raytheon’s Rapid Alliance™ solution. In remarks to an IWCE session on the evolution from Land Mobile Radio (LMR) to Long-Term Evolution (LTE), Michael Prout, vice president of Security and Transportation Systems for Raytheon’s Network Centric Systems business, described how the company’s open architecture approach to critical communications improves the way public safety agencies communicate with one another. His remarks came as Congress recently passed legislation to provide $7bn for a dedicated, nationwide LTE network. Raytheon also launched at IWCE its branding campaign for Rapid Alliance™, the company’s interoperable communications solution. “Rapid Alliance™ integrates best-in-class technologies to deliver a proven, robust and reliable approach to the real-world needs of first responders,” Prout said. “Looking to the future, this solution is fully interoperable for both LMR and LTE, consistent with Raytheon’s vis