‘Space for Human Security and Safety’: this year’s World Space Week topic is a familiar one for Air Traffic Control (ATC) professionals. What happens in space, from satellites to solar storms, can have a major influence on aviation across the world.

The use of satellites has become fundamental to the way communication, navigation and surveillance technologies support ATC. It also has an impact on the way in which meteorological information is obtained.

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is a satellite augmentation system which improves the reliability of existing satellite navigation signals. Certified for civil aviation in 2011, EGNOS was Europe’s first venture into the world of satellite navigation.

Galileo, which is entirely under civilian control, is the next step and offers a complement, or even an alternative, to the Global Positioning System (GPS). With Galileo’s enhanced capabilities, Europe will be able to benefit from a robust Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) that is of particular benefit in the northern latitudes. The future GNSS will enable the deployment of more demanding navigation applications (including Performance Based Navigation) and will give aircraft better protection from obstacles in an increasingly dense air traffic management (ATM) environment.

When combined with Area Navigation System Support, GNSS improves situation awareness by taking ground-based navigation aids beyond their previous limits. EGNOS allows vertical guidance during the final approach segment of a flight; bringing particular safety improvements for airports with limited or no ground-based navigational aids.

The use of timing data from satellites is already commonplace for current surveillance infrastructures, but ongoing developments are allowing us to extract much more benefit from satellite technology. Developments such as ADS-B surveillance exploit GNSS technologies to enable a range of new separation applications, both on the ground and in the air.

GNSS technologies are also enhanced by Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) tracking of aircraft. A number of research activities are underway to assess the use of satellites in relaying an aircraft’s position and key parameters to the ground via ADS-B transmissions. Should these research endeavours succeed, real-time and cost-effective surveillance of aircraft from anywhere on the planet could become a reality.

Space weather might also be an issue for aviation. The subject was covered by EUROCONTROL in June, demonstrating how solar storms, through radiation, can interfere with avionic equipment and affect aircraft crews and passengers. The hostile environment of space, in particular the impact of violent solar storms emanating from the sun, pose a threat to the use of satellite technologies. These threats must be taken into account in the designing of safety critical systems used to support ATC. As well as looking to exploit the benefits that satellite technologies bring, the Network Manager also has a role in ensuring that these risk factors do not have a detrimental impact on European ATM.

Eurocontrol release