Lausanne, July 18 (UPI)
The European Space Agency has reported the conclusion of successful trials of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service.
The service was used to guide a helicopter as it approached and touched down at an emergency medical service landing pad in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The ESA said the position reporting and navigation system provides three-dimensional guidance, with vertical guidance being a major advantage EGNOS offers over the Global Positioning System maintained by the United States.
EGNOS is made up of a network of more than 40 elements across Europe that collect, record, correct and improve data from the U.S. GPS. The modified signals are then relayed via ESA geostationary satellites to user's terminals, offering a reportedly positional accuracy of better than 6 1/2 feet, compared with up to nearly 50 feet for GPS alone.
In addition, the ESA said EGNOS gives a guarantee of quality for its signals that GPS doesn't provide.
The Lausanne trials were performed by Eurocopter, using their EC155 experimental all-weather helicopter (Hélicoptère Tous Temps – HTT). The trial programme was coordinated by skyguide, the Swiss air navigation service provider and consisted of a number of validating approaches performed by the HTT to a Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS) pad located on the roof of Lausanne University Hospital.
The trial approaches were designed for 6° and 9° approaches.
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