Too many satellites for too little benefit

I posted earlier this week about the increasing number of satellites and the increasing number of systems that all do the same thing.   It seems even worse than I realised, if this article is anything to go by:

The UK government’s plan to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a satellite broadband company has been described as “nonsensical” by experts, who say the company doesn’t even make the right type of satellite the country needs after Brexit.

The investment in OneWeb, first reported on Thursday night, is intended to mitigate against the UK losing access to the EU’s Galileo satellite navigation system.

As I said in my last post, I don't understand how this civilian access to competing GPS systems works - given that most mobile phones specs say they can use two or three of the current systems.   How does the EU stop phones accessing their signal?

Anyway, back to the story of too many satellites:

But OneWeb – in which the UK will own a 20% stake following the investment – currently operates a completely different type of satellite network from that typically used to run such navigation systems.

“The fundamental starting point is, yes, we’ve bought the wrong satellites,” said Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester. “OneWeb is working on basically the same idea as Elon Musk’s Starlink: a mega-constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit, which are used to connect people on the ground to the internet.

“What’s happened is that the very talented lobbyists at OneWeb have convinced the government that we can completely redesign some of the satellites to piggyback a navigation payload on it. It’s bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that’s designed to do something else. It’s a tech and business gamble.”

Giles Thorne, a research analyst at Jeffries, agreed. “This situation is nonsensical to me,” he said. “This situation looks like nationalism trumping solid industrial policy.”

Every major positioning system currently in use – America’s GPS, Russia’s Glonass, China’s BeiDou, and Galileo, the EU project that the UK helped design before losing access to due to Brexit – is in a medium Earth orbit, Thorne said, approximately 20,000km from Earth. OneWeb’s satellites, 74 of which have already been launched, are in a low Earth orbit, just 1,200km up.

Bowen said: “If you want to replace GPS for military-grade systems, where you need encrypted, secure signals that are precise to centimetres, I’m not sure you can do that on satellites as small as OneWeb’s.”

Rather than being selected for the quality of the offering, Thorne suggested the investment was made to suit “a nationalist agenda”. OneWeb is nominally a UK business, with a UK HQ and spectrum rights registered in the UK through Ofcom.

OK, I just realised - maybe the UK loss of access to Galileo is more to do with military access rather than civilian access?  Yes, that seems right, according to this UK government page:

In the event of the UK leaving the EU without a negotiated agreement, the majority of position, navigation and timing services provided by Galileo and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay will continue to be freely available to all UK based users. The Prime Minister has made clear the UK will not use Galileo (including the Public Regulated Service) for defence or critical national infrastructure.

The UK will no longer play any part in the development of Galileo or European Geostationary Navigation Overlay programmes. This means that UK-based businesses, academics and researchers will be unable to bid for future EU Global Navigation Satellite System contracts and may face difficulty carrying out and completing existing contracts. For example, it may not be possible for businesses or organisations which currently host Galileo and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay ground infrastructure to continue to do so.

To prepare for this scenario the UK is exploring alternatives to fulfil its needs for secure and resilient position, navigation and timing information. These contingency options are made possible by the expertise of the UK space sector and will be assessed on their own merits. The government will invest £92 million from the Brexit readiness fund on an 18-month programme to design a UK Global Navigation Satellite System. This will inform the decision to create an independent system as an alternative to Galileo.

Still, this loss of access to Galileo's more sophisticated services sound like one of those issues that would have been completely glossed over when the populists were running their pro-Brexit campaign, and it sounds like it will cost a lot to replicate.