NEWSPAPER

NEWSPAce PPP ReceivER

The GNSS market is rapidly evolving, together with its underlying technologies. The main drivers of this development can be traced on the one hand to the push of increasingly sophisticated technologies and employment of complementary techniques and, on the other hand, to the pull from the users who have growing demands in terms of positioning accuracy, continuity, availability and interoperability with other systems. 

In this framework, new needs are arising in the market, driven by the NewSpace momentum. Indeed, Space users are becoming increasingly diverse, both in the public and private sectors. The rapid diversification of the space ecosystem, made possible through innovative geo-information business models and significant private capital investment, is therefore propelling space activities into the commercial realm. Also, it led to the major trend in space to move away from large, expensive satellites to constellations of smaller, cost-optimised satellites (e.g., Oneweb, Telesat, Amazon’s Kuiper and SpaceX Starlink). 

Hence, there is an arising need to gear together GNSS with the NewSpace market. The NEWSPAPER project does exactly this, by developing a GNSS receiving system capable of using Precise Point Positioning (PPP) technique utilizing Galileo’s High Accuracy Service (HAS) transmitted on the Galileo E6 signal. 

The goal of the NEWSPAPER project focuses on the development of a spaceborne GNSS receiver for NewSpace, capable of Precise Point Positioning based on Galileo's E6 signal resulting in a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 7 demonstrator.  

The receiver supports high accuracy timing, autonomous electrical thruster control and collision avoidance, and is targeted for applications on (mega) constellations of LEO satellites requiring most precise navigation in the area of telecommunication, earth observation, climate research, and environmental data collection.

Challenge and technical solution

The NEWSPAPER project intends to close a significant technology gap for GNSS receivers through:

• leveraging the unique Galileo High Accuracy Service
• precise positioning and robust timing using wide bandwidth E-GNSS signals
• dual and triple frequency operation of the GNSS receiver
• satellite-based real-time Precise Point Positioning without commercial correction service