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Galileo, the prestigious European satellite navigation system, is under threat by the United States.
According to the Business Week magazine, the US threatened to attack the Galileo network if it is used by alleged adversaries, such as terrorists.
This is nothing but a US monopoly and sharply runs counter to the spirit of peaceful use of outer space and closer international space cooperation.
It explicitly demonstrates, once again, the urgency for the rest of the world to have an independent satellite-based positioning and timing infrastructure to ruffle the dominance of the US amid mounting worries about its post-September 11 hegemony in the name of anti-terror.
The intention to free the EU from its reliance on the US Global Positioning System (GPS) prompted the launch of Galileo, one of the European Union's (EU) most ambitious projects.
Unlike the US system, which is run by and primarily for the US military, Galileo is designed to deliver real-time positioning accuracy down to the meter range -- unprecedented for a publicly available system.
The project aims to have the first of 30 satellites in space in 2006 and the whole system can begin operating two years later.
Being an impressive technological achievement and a hugely practical tool, Galileo is a political statement of European technological independence from the United States.
The US has made its GPS system available free of charge to non-military users since 1983 and to date has seen "no compelling need" for a competing European system. It believes the US system will meet the needs of users for the foreseeable future, even when millions of mobile phones become equipped with GPS receivers.
But the US military has contingency plans for denying access to GPS signals to its enemies in specific areas of conflict.
However, Galileo promises a more reliable and accurate service unaffected by military needs, and uninterrupted access for all users, both civil and military.
The Pentagon thus complained that the system could interfere with the signals of its military-run GPS, and went so far as to threaten to attack it.
The US saber-rattling spoke volumes about the importance for the rest of the world to be present on the international scene in all aspects of cutting-edge technologies.
Space is so vast and any earthly ambition to monopolize it would make no sense.
The Pentagon should be fully mindful that the world will never accept "serfdom" in space by relying solely on US GPS.
(China Daily October 28, 2004)
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