More nations want independent GPS

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The Beidou launches have complicated China's relationship with European officials in charge of developing Galileo. Until recently, Chinese and European engineers had been collaborating on technical projects under an agreement to support Galileo. European officials have put those joint efforts on pause partly because of questions over China's Compass plan, a European Commission official said. "There's going to be some other system out there, and we want to make sure it's going to be compatible with Galileo. We are asking for information from them," the official said.

In the United States, at least one member of Congress is concerned that Europe, through its Galileo contacts with China, already might have unwittingly helped China improve its military capabilities.

"I would oppose any cooperative efforts with dictatorships like China because they inherently lead to technology transfers," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).

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Meanwhile, Japan is working on the first of three spacecraft planned for a regional navigation constellation called the Quazi-Zenith Satellite System. The first QZSS satellite is scheduled for launch in 2009 into a highly elliptical orbit.

In Parkinson's opinion, it is "very probable" that the Japanese and Chinese will continue their programs. "In part this is because of the world perception that the [Department of Defense] controlled system can be easily disrupted," he said.

In India, space officials have two navigation projects in mind. They plan to launch a system of geosynchronous satellites to improve the accuracy of GPS signals for use at Indian airports and airspace. Development of the GEO Augmented Navigation system appears to have U.S. blessing. Raytheon, based in Waltham, Mass., is providing the ground terminals.

In 2006, India also announced it would develop an Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System by putting a seven-satellite constellation in place by 2011.

In some ways the orbital architecture debates that are no doubt taking place in China, India and Japan might mirror those that took place in the United States in the 1970s.

"For regional deployment, geo-synchronous is a very reasonable approach," Parkinson said. In fact, some U.S. officials had advocated that as a test of U.S. navigation-satellite capabilities, he said.

Instead, U.S. officials decided to launch a first batch of six medium Earth orbit satellites that would provide four to six hours of "representative coverage," Parkinson said.

If other nations do succeed in setting up regional, and then global systems, and those signals are made interchangeable with GPS signals, that would a boon to satellite navigation customers, especially those in canyon or mountainous terrain, Parkinson said.

"The extra satellites will greatly strengthen the geometry for these impaired users," he said.

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