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Europe has moved one giant step closer to operating its own long-awaited global navigation satellite system, Galileo, designed to challenge the domination of the U.S. military's GPS, or Global Positioning System. The first element of the Continent's ambitious Galileo program, the GIOVE-A satellite, successfully lifted off atop a Soyuz rocket launched from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, and entered its designated orbit some 23,000 km above the earth. A further test launch is scheduled for early 2006, and the first four craft of Galileo's 30-satellite "constellation" are due to be in place and working in 2008. By the end of 2010, the system should be fully operational.

GIOVE-A (or Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element) will be testing new technologies — including atomic clocks, signal generators and user receivers — for what has been a dream of the European Union since the early 1990s: a wide-ranging navigation system that is faster and more precise than GPS, provides an uninterrupted service under civilian control, and offers a commercial alternative to the U.S. system and its Russian counterpart, GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System).

Galileo marks the largest-ever alliance between the independent European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission. "Years of fruitful cooperation have now provided a new facility in space for improving the life of European citizens on Earth," ESA's director general, Jean-Jacques Dordain, said after the launch. As the role of space in strengthening Europe's political and economic role has blossomed — particularly in such areas as communications, navigation and environmental monitoring — links between ESA and the EU have grown.

The public-private Galileo system is meant to provide real-time positioning accuracy (down to one meter in open, mass-market applications, and to mere centimeters in commercial applications). Such data can be utilized in transportation, civil protection, telecommunications, construction, fisheries, oil prospecting, map-making and a host of other services, including life-saving ones. According to ESA, studies show that further social and economic benefits will come from improved route guidance, management of ambulances and taxis, reduced pollution via reduction of travel times, and job creation.

Scientists say the Galileo system will provide highly accurate readings for most places on Earth, including high-rise cities where signals from satellites low on the horizon are obscured. Moreover, Galileo's 30 satellites, orbiting at a greater inclination to the earth's equatorial plane than GPS's 24 craft, will also provide improved coverage at high latitudes, such as northern Europe, which is not well covered by GPS.

The European Commission is keen to see rapid progress on Galileo, which is estimated to cost at least €1.5 billion in its initial development and deployment phases. Later funding also will come from private companies, before the system eventually begins generating revenue itself. Even so, satellite technology is expensive, and the ESA and the EU may find that Galileo's margin of error in pinpointing a spot anywhere on Earth may prove far more accurate than the accountants' projections.

• MARYANN BIRD
• Europe attempts to find a place of its own in satellite navigation