GIOVE-B Gets Unwrapped In Kazakhstan

The GIOVE-B navsat payload is now going through its checkout at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Arianespace‘ Starsem affiliate’s satellite will be launched on a Soyuz rocket, which itself is currently going through the integration process. GIOVE-B was delivered to the launch site on March 13th, along with its ground support equipment, arriving aboard an Antonov An-124 cargo jetliner. Also at the Cosmodrome, pneumatic testing for the Soyuz launcher’s propulsion system has been performed. This will be followed by the integration of the vehicle’s four first stage boosters with its central core.

Starsem’s launch of GIOVE-B is planned for April 27th at 04:16:02 local time (00:16 Central European Summer Time, 22:16 UTC on April 26). This will be the 21st commercial mission for Starsem and follows last December’s launch of the Canadian RADARSAT-2 commercial C-band synthetic aperture radar satellite. GIOVE-B is the second in-orbit validation spacecraft for Europe’s new Galileo global navigation satellite system and is designed to test key technologies for the Galileo network, including the triple-channel transmission of navigation signals. The satellite will carry a high-precision passive maser clock, which will be the most accurate clock ever flown in space. The spacecraft will be able to transmit MBOC (multiplexed binary offset carrier) signals in accordance with a recent compliance agreement for European/U.S. space-based navigation systems. GIOVE-B will have a liftoff mass of 530 kg. and was built by an industrial consortium headed by Astrium GmbH (Germany) as satellite prime, and Thales Alenia Space (Italy) as subcontractor for satellite assembly, integration and test.