Franchu’s lair

A couple of days ago, Russia has launched 3 new GLONASS satellites. It seems that finally we will get to see one day the full constellation working and those are good news for all of us who are in the satellite navigation systems business.

The increase of satellites will lead to an enhanced accuracy and more availability in areas that were not benefited by the GPS orbital planes configuration specially the high northern latitudes as in northern Europe, Canada and Alaska. This is due to the fact that GLONASS was designed to provide very good accuracy over Russia and the US. Let’s not forget that it was in the beginning, and still is, a military system for guidance of ICBMs that nowadays happens to have many civilian uses and users.

After being twice in Russia some years ago and talking with people that work with GLONASS on a daily basis, I was able to see how proud they are of their system and how hard they believed that it will be operational one day. Now I am really happy to see that the day when we will all be able to use it is near.

I have also found out a nice website in which you can follow the status of the GLONASS constellation (they also have some information on GPS) and the predicted coverage as show in the image below.

Availability on the base of the GLONASS constellation (The Mask angle: 5°) via kwout

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