Europe's satellite navigation pair takes off

Russia's Soyuz boosters brought the first two satellites in Europe's global positioning system to Earth's orbit yesterday.

>>>Europe's satellite launch is postponed

The launch took place at 7:30 am through Guiana.

BBC said, the launch took place at Europe's aerospace airport in Guiana - overseas territory of France in South America - at 7:30 yesterday. Earlier the launch was postponed because engineers discovered an open valve while putting fuel into the rocket.

These are the first two satellites belonging to Galileo Global Positioning System of Europe. The weight of each satellite is 700kg. Russia's Soyuz boosters will bring them to a height of more than 23,000km.

Galileo Global Positioning System of Europe consists of 30 artificial satellites. The process of deploying the remaining 28 satellites can take place for nearly a decade. In the near future, users of global positioning services cannot receive any benefits from Galileo. They will have to wait until 2014 or 2015, when Galileo provides some basic services.

Compared to the US Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo Global Positioning System of Europe is equipped with atomic clocks with higher accuracy. Atomic clocks are considered 'hearts' of all satellite navigation systems. Theoretically, Galileo's data will be more accurate than GPS. GPS errors can be up to 10m, while Galileo's error will be only one meter or less.

The European Union expects Galileo to dominate the global positioning service in the world thanks to more accurate and reliable positioning than GPS. Its applications will be very wide - from helping farmers to accurately seed the field to identifying the victims' locations in rescue operations.