Satellite navigation

46,000 flights logged satellite navigation (satnav) issues over the Baltic region between August and March

A dire situation looms over European airspace as thousands of passenger planes, predominantly ferrying tourists, find themselves ensnared in a perilous web of Russian jamming attacks, leaving them disoriented and vulnerable mid-flight.

A group of climbers, research geologists and topography specialists have recalculated the altitude of Mt Olympus, Greece's highest mountain, with modern methods, a century after the Swiss surveyor and alpinist Marcel Kurz in 1921.

His work was completed in 1923, calculating the altitude at 2,917.85 meters.

Today, the European Galileo satellite navigation system will reach 1 billion smartphone users worldwide. This coincides with the 15th anniversary of the European Agency for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GSA), the Commission's main partner in the operation of Galileo.

This year China will launch six to eight new satellites from the Beidou navigation system, officials said yesterday at the 10th China Satellite Navigation Conference.

Two or three satellites will be launched in 2020 when the Beidou-3 system will be fully completed, said China's Directorate for Satellite Navigation, Zheng Cheng Xin.

Britain is set to demand the European Union repays up to 1 billion pounds ($1.34 billion) if the bloc continues to force British companies out of the Galileo satellite navigation system, a government official said.

China has added two satellites to its homegrown global navigation and positioning network that seeks to reduce reliance on the U.S.-based Global Positioning System.

Russia's rocket Proton has managed to bring its telecommunications satellite called Beam into orbit, Russian space agency Roskosmos has announced.

Beam is expected to help GLONASS, the Russian satellite navigation system of the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces, to improve its precision.