On 8 April, teams from the European Space Agency (ESA) and industry partners gathered at ESA’s Navigation Lab at ESTEC, the agency’s technical heart in the Netherlands.
After moments full of anticipation, they received the very first navigation signal from the Celeste mission, marking the first successful transmission of a navigation signal from a European satellite in low Earth orbit.
The Celeste mission is ESA’s initiative for Low Earth Orbit Positioning, Navigation and Timing (LEO-PNT) and is currently in its in-orbit demonstration phase.
ESTEC’s Navigation Lab is at the core of all ESA’s Navigation testing activities, and so was a natural choice to receive the mission’s first signal. But there is one other reason – more than 10 years ago, this very lab was where another milestone for European navigation took place: the first determination of a ground location using satellites in the Galileo constellation.