EGNOS to be extended across Africa
The European Space Agency (ESA) and the African Aviation Safety Agency (ASECNA) have signed a cooperation agreement on extending satellite navigation services in Africa. The agreement, which was signed at the recent Paris Air Show, will permit African countries to use ESA's satellites to improve air traffic safety across the continent. They will benefit from the next phase of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) deployment, which includes the extension and use of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS). EGNOS, a programme of the ESA, the European Commission and Eurocontrol, was initially set up with a view to improving the functionalities of the GPS (US) and GLONASS (Russia) systems. The system achieves a level of accuracy in GPS positioning by broadcasting information from geostationary satellites, thus permitting receivers on the ground to resolve errors in GPS signals. ESA says that extending EGNOS to Africa should be easy enough to implement, since the geostationary satellites that relay the service already cover Africa, as well as Europe. This is not the first time that ESA and ASECNA have worked together. Since 2003, the two bodies have organised several test campaigns of EGNOS services in African airports, where conventional landing guidance systems are rare. Thanks to EGNOS signals, the first crossing of Africa at its widest part, from Dakar to Mombasa, was achieved in May 2005.