The iWorld

EU recently launched the Giove-B which is the second test satellite in its $5.3 billion Galileo project. Galileo is Europe's upcoming satellite radio navigation system, and it's the EU's largest space program. Galileo was initially conceived of as a largely commercial venture. But the project proved too ambitious to be sustained by the original public-private partnership.

Giove-A has been launched by the EU back in December 2005. The new Giove-B that has been recently launched will test the program's high-precision atomic clock and signal transmission as the next stage of the project.