Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design
At its November 23 meeting, the European Union’s Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECONFIN) approved €940 million in supplementary funding during fiscal year 2008 to support a public procurement of the Galileo system.
By Glen Gibbons
On Tuesday (November 13) European Union (EU) finance ministers will address the European Commision (EC) proposal for all-public funding of the Galileo program.
The proposal announced by the EC in September would use the 2007 and 2008 budgetary reserves for agriculture and administration — totaling about €2.5 billion — to augment a €1-billion Galileo allocation already in place. European transport ministers will take up the issue again in December.
By Glen Gibbons
“Growing Galileo” is the theme of a conference and exhibition taking place November 14–15 in Brussels, Belgium, that will highlight the work under way and planned for developing applications of Europe’s GNSS system.
By Glen Gibbons
Ten-year-old u-blox AG has launched its initial public offering (IPO) of stock, which will begin trading October 26 on the Swiss Exchange. Price range for the offered shares is between 42 and 54 Swiss francs (CHF: US$35.53 and $45.68).
By Glen Gibbons
The University of Nottingham and the East Midlands Development Agency (emda) have signed a formal agreement that will create a £9 million (US$18.3 million) state-of-the-art GNSS facility built in Nottingham, United Kingdom.
By Glen Gibbons
GIOVE-A satellite with Fregat moduleUnavailability of an upper stage of the Soyuz launcher will delay launch of the second Galileo In-Orbit Validation Element satellite (GIOVE-B) until at least March 2008. The most recent schedule had called for a late-December launch from the Baikonur Space Center in Kazakhstan.
Already behind schedule as the result of an electrical short that caused widespread damage to the spacecraft during laboratory tests in summer 2006, the Galileo program’s latest postponement reportedly stems from the lack of a Fregat module. Fregat is the portion of the Russian rocket that releases the spacecraft into its final orbit (shown with GIOVE-A in accompanying ESA photo).
By Glen Gibbons
The European Transport Council generally reaffirmed its commitment to the Galileo program in an October 2 meeting without resolving some underlying differences of how to finance the system following abandonment of the public-private partnership (PPP) approach earlier this year.
In its first look at the European Commission (EC) plan to complete the system by 2013 under a more traditional public procurement process, the council confirmed its intention “to take an integrated decision on the European GNSS before the end of the year.”
By Glen Gibbons
Swedish technology group Hexagon AB, which acquired Leica Geosystems in 2005, launched its tender offer to acquire all the issued and outstanding common shares of NovAtel Inc., a Calgary, Alberta, Canada–based developer and manufacturer of OEM GNSS and related products, at a price per share of US$50 cash.
By Glen Gibbons
Thales Alenia Space Italia (TAS-I) has awarded NovAtel Inc. a €440,000 milestone award for continued development of the Galileo ground reception Chain (GRC) reference receiver. Although the incremental size of the award is modest, the agreement provides for confirmed, longer-term funding of a two-year-old contract valued at €6.3M (US$8.6 million).
By Glen Gibbons
NovAtel Inc. has acquired privately held antenna manufacturer Antcom Corporation (Antcom) for $5 million in cash and an additional $1 million in cash subject to Antcom’s achievement of certain financial targets for the calendar year ended December 31, 2007.
By Glen Gibbons
The United States and the European Union (EU) have agreed to use the multiplexed binary offset carrier (MBOC) for a common GPS-Galileo signal for civilian use. In the future, this will enable combined GNSS receivers to track the GPS and Galileo signals with higher accuracy, even in challenging environments that include multipath, noise, and interference.
These signals will be implemented on the Galileo Open Service and the GPS IIIA new L1 civil signal known as L1C.
By Inside GNSS
GSA Executive Director Pedro Pedreira (left) and Guiseppe Viriglio, ESA director of telecom and navigation, at signing of accordHaving abandoned — for the time being at least — attempts to attract private investment to the creation of Galileo’s infrastructure, European GNSS leaders are working to shape a Plan B that can gain support from the program’s extensive group of stakeholders.
By Inside GNSS
A sea change appears to be taking place in Europe’s Galileo program as its political masters prepare to transform the struggling public-private partnership (PPP) into a more traditional institutional program wholly sponsored by the public sector.
That would move an additional €2.4 to €3 billion onto the public tax burden, but it might also represent the quickest route to completion of the GNSS project backed by the European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency (ESA).
By Inside GNSS
