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Satellite tie-up for fast Galileo

The test satellite, Giove-A, was launched in 2005

The UK company that built the test satellite for Europe's Galileo network is joining forces with a German firm to bid together to build more satellites.

SSTL believes the link-up will drive down costs and speed up production by boosting competition among suppliers.

Europe's proposed rival to the US Global Positioning System (GPS) has been delayed by rows over funding.

A compromise deal is expected to be announced at a meeting of transport ministers in Brussels on Thursday.

It follows a recent agreement by EU members to use leftover portions of the farming budget and spare science and technology funds to cover a 4bn euros (£3bn) funding gap. The shortfall was created when a private consortium asked to build and operate Galileo collapsed.

Under the new deal, the work will be split into six segments, enabling all countries to get a share of the construction work.

Project impetus

Amid this backdrop, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) is joining forces with OHB, based in Bremen, Germany.

GALILEO UNDER CONSTRUCTION A European Commission and European Space Agency project 30 satellites to be launched in batches by end of 2011-12 Will work alongside US GPS and Russian Glonass systems Promises real-time positioning down to less than a metre Guaranteed under all but most extreme circumstances Suitable for safety-critical roles where lives depend on service Europe lofts Galileo satellite Q&A: Europe's Galileo project Galileo puts UK on map

OHB has built several satellites for research purposes and is involved in human spaceflight and the Columbus space laboratory.

"To date there's been no competition for operational Galileo satellites," said Phillip Davies, the business development manager at Guildford-based SSTL.

"The announcement of the new team opens up the possibility of a real competition."

The partnership believes it can produce Galileo spacecraft quickly and at an extremely competitive price. OHB would build the satellites; SSTL would produce the electronic payloads.

The 30-strong constellation of Galileo satellites was conceived in the 1990s as an alternative to GPS, the technology that underpins car navigation systems and tracking devices.

European market

The proposed European system promises to improve the availability and precision of location and timing signals delivered from space. Designed to work alongside GPS, the enhanced programme is expected to drive many new applications, especially as new mobile phones come on to the market with sat-nav functionality.

Galileo will have five services geared to different types of application or need.

So far only a single test satellite - built and operated by SSTL - has been launched. Giove-A was lofted from Kazakhstan in December 2005.

A contract for the first four satellites in the final constellation was placed with a consortium, known today as European Satellite Navigation Industries, in 2004. New contracts must be placed in the coming months for more spacecraft if Galileo is to maintain its present schedule of being operational by the end of 2012.

A committee of British MPs recently called for the scheme to be curtailed unless there was a more convincing cost-benefit analysis; but SSTL has always maintained that once the system becomes even partially operational, the benefits will be obvious. It believes its partnership with OHB provides a solution to getting Galileo working quickly.

A new war?

An interesting (and scary) idea I had one day was, could there be a war over the Internet? think about it. there are computers everywhere, and now people have the knowhow to do bad things with them, whats stopping them? especially in America.... to be continued... Some theories of how castrographic damage can be done.

new x-ray scanner

excerpt from bbc.com

The new 256-slice CT machine takes large numbers of X-ray pictures, and combines them using computer technology to produce the final detailed images.

It also generates images in a fraction of the time of other scanners: a full body scan takes less than a minute.

The Philips machine was unveiled at the Radiological Society of North America.

Because the images are 3D they can be rotated and viewed from different directions - giving doctors the greatest possible help in looking for signs of abnormalities or disease.

All images also can be accessed on any computer in a hospital or by colleagues and researchers remotely, to make it easier for the whole team to share information.

The heart in fine detail Enlarge Image

The scan is much quicker than current technology, as the machine's X-ray emitting gantry - the giant ring-shaped part that surrounds the patient - can rotate four times in a single second - 22% faster than current systems.

The cost of the equipment - known as the Brilliance CT - is unclear.

At present, it is only being used in one hospital: the Metro Health medical centre in Cleveland, Ohio, which has been using it for the past month.

"This scanner allows radiologists to produce high quality images and is also designed to reduce patients' exposure to X-rays," Steve Rusckowski, chief executive of Philips Medical Systems, said.

"It is so powerful it can capture an image of the entire heart in just two beats."

The record company EMI was behind the first commercially viable CT scanner, which was invented by Sir Godfrey Newbold Hounsfield in Hayes, United Kingdom at the company's laboratories and unveiled in 1972.

At the same time, Allan McLeod Cormack of Tufts University independently invented a similar machine, and the two men shared the 1979 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

"This is a quantum shift from the first CT scanners as it gives a lot more detail," says Dr Keith Prowse, Chairman of the British Lung Foundation.

"It seems to be another step beyond what we were previously able to do. The high resolution enables you to see smaller things in both the lungs and the airways and then decide whether there is anything there and how best to get at it.

"In the case of cancer, it will help us see how far it has spread. It will also help us pick up new patterns of abnormality. It promises to be a significant advance."