The Galileo constellation now has 18 satellites in orbit as it moves towards the declaration of Initial Services.

The 2016 GSA Open Days was a chance for the public to get a behind-the-scenes look at the Galileo and EGNOS space programmes.

Two GSA-funded projects – BELS and GNSS.asia – are encouraging the use of European GNSS in Asia through the launch of two innovation competitions. 

From a competitive field of submissions, the European GNSS Agency has awarded the 2017 Farming by Satellite Prize to projects coming from France, Kenya, the Czech Republic and Italy.

With last month’s Declaration of Galileo Initial Services, anyone with a mass-market device containing a Galileo-enabled chipset, such as a smartphone or a vehicle navigation device, can be guided using the positioning, navigation and timing information provided by Galileo’s global satellite constellation.

New Galileo Open Service Signal-In-Space Operational Status Definition Document Now Available

According to US Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules, all commercial equipment receiving non-US satellite signals on US territory must be licenced by the FCC. However, the FCC can grant a waiver to those rules.

Following a lengthy and complex tendering process that started in January 2015, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) awarded the Galileo Service Operator (GSOp) contract, with a value of up to EUR 1.5 billion, to Spaceopal at a special event in Brussels. Spaceopal is a joint venture between the German Aerospace Agency (DLR) and Italy’s Telespazio.

 

The European GNSS Agency (GSA), together with EUROCONTROL, recently held a two-day meeting at its Prague headquarters. More than 120 people participated, including national air navigation service providers and authorities, civil and military aircraft operators, pilots, international aviation associations, equipment manufacturers and rotorcraft operators.