Gagan: India's eye in the sky

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shirish

Forerunner
ndian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI) are at work to provide a modern navigation system over the Indian airspace.

The system, christened GAGAN or GPS and Geo Augmented Navigation, will be a Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS).

GAGAN will be operational by end 2007. For Delhi Airport it would mean less delays during the winter months when fog throws air traffic out of gear. GAGAN will operate like Category IIIA Instrument Landing System, helping flights land in near zero visibility conditions. Its accuracy will be within 1 metre. It will provide both lateral and vertical guidance.

Worldwide, ships and aircraft use two core constellations to determine their position - the GPS system of the US and a similar Russian system.

These set of satellites send a time-stamped message to the aircraft and ship, helping it fix its location and route. The position accuracy achievable with these core constellations (GPS and GLONASS) is 30 metres and not good enough for precision approach and landing requirements of civil aviation in India. These need to be augmented. GAGAN, with its satellites and ground-based transmitters will fill this gap over the Indian airspace.

There are three types of augmentation systems - Ground Based (GBAS), Aircraft Based (ABAS) Space/Satellite Based (SBAS). The ground and aircraft based systems have several handicaps - not available over the oceanic (Indian Ocean) airspace, unable to cover India's territorial airspace, performance dependent on terrain conditions, expensive to maintain and require periodic calibration.

GAGAN is being implemented in three stages:

Stage I: Technology Demonstration System — is complete.

Stage II: Initial Experimentation Phase — year-long, under process.

Stage III: Final Operational Phase — scheduled for 2007.

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The last I had heard about it was that it was being merged with the Russian GLONASS & now this announcement :huh:

Don't think we've either the money power or the interest to generate it. The apps. are there

govt. with the defence, the ASI & many others have a stronghold on GIS as well as maps. Unless the

laws are amended & people can make free maps atleast this will remain a white elephant.

Wikipedia said:
Following a joint venture deal with the Indian Government, which will launch two GLONASS-M satellites on its GSLV rockets, it is proposed to have the system fully operational again by 2008 with 18 satellites, providing full coverage of Russia territory, and by 2010 with all 24 satellites. During the December 2005 summit between Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Russian President Vladimir Putin, it was agreed that India would share the development costs of the GLONASS-K series and launch them from India.
 
Actually, I remember hearing about this 3.5 years ago... a lot of countries were coming together to retrofit GPS with the necessary capabilities, it needed processing power more than anything else.
 
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