In Business & Security, Sky Isn't The Limit For GAGAN

End-April saw first aircraft landing via India's satellite navigation system. The potential is huge

- Aditya Ramanathan

On April 28, an IndiGo ATR aircraft landed at Kishangarh Airport in Rajasthan using GAGAN, India’s own Space-Based Augmented System (SBAS). Though only a trial, the landing was a significant achievement that could allow aircraft to operate in poor weather conditions at smaller airports that lack expensive instrumentation. The landing was also a rare demonstration of how the US Global Positioning System (GPS) could be augmented for use in critical ‘safety of life’ applications like aviation.

More significantly, GAGAN is emblematic of the profound effects that satellite navigation has had on both commercial and military undertakings. As satellite navigation matures, these effects are only likely to deepen and thus impinge on India’s own relative power in the world.

Cooperating and competing on navigation

GAGAN is an acronym for GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation and its infrastructure reaches from earth to space. On earth, reference stations receive American GPS signals that are then collated and corrected for ionospheric distortions and other errors. The corrected signal is then broadcast from three Indian geostationary satellites, providing a more accurate and reliable service for aircraft.