As if a puzzling signal anomaly on the latest GPS Block IIR-M satellite and continued struggles in the long-delayed Block IIF schedule hadn’t created enough pressure, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report sketches dire prospects for the GPS program.

As if a puzzling signal anomaly on the latest GPS Block IIR-M satellite and continued struggles in the long-delayed Block IIF schedule hadn’t created enough pressure, a recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report sketches dire prospects for the GPS program.

In what is not necessarily its worst-case scenario, for example, the GAO suggests that a two-year delay in the production and launch of the first and all subsequent GPS III satellites “would reduce the probability of maintaining a 24-satellite constellation to about 10 percent by around fiscal year 2018.”

That would be fewer than the minimum number of satellites to which the U.S. government has committed for national and international user communities. It would also surely diminish the quality of GPS service, particularly for military, safety-critical, and urban applications.

However, 12 months into a 72-month schedule from contract award to first launch, the GPS IIIA program is still on track for a 2014 launch, according to officials at the GPS Wing and Lockheed Martin, which won the $1.4-billion development and production contract in May 2008.

The GPS Wing, part of the Space & Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles Air Force Base, California, successfully completed an integrated baseline review of the GPS IIIA program last October 31. An overall segment-level preliminary design review (PDR) will take place within about a week.

In March, Lockheed Martin Space Systems said the company and industry partners ITT and General Dynamics had successfully completed 19 out of 71 PDRs for key GPS III spacecraft subsystems and assemblies. These included L-band transmitters, antennas, solar arrays, power regulation unit, all attitude control assemblies, as well as the tracking telemetry and command (TT&C) subsystem and all TT&C assemblies.

The U.S. government plans to invest more than $5.8 billion from 2009 through 2013 in GPS Space and ground control segments. The proposed 2010 fiscal year (FY10) budget for the GPS program expenditures on these items is $927.8 million. This will fund satellite launch, integration of replenishment satellites, and continued development of the GPS constellation, including GPS III, as well as the ground control system (OCX).

Nonetheless, in a report issued April 30 under the title, “Global Positioning System — Significant Challenges in Sustaining and Upgrading Widely Used Capabilities,” Cristina Chaplain, the GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management and primary author of the report, indicated that “considerable risk” still exists that the schedule may not be met.

Noting GPS IIIA’s “highly compressed” timeline, the GAO report said that the schedule “is shorter than most other major space programs we have reviewed,” adding “no major satellite program undertaken in the past decade has met its scheduled goals.”

A 2-year delay in the launch schedule would translate into “5 years when the U.S. government would be operating a GPS constellation of fewer than 24 satellites, and a 12-year period during which the government would not meet its commitment to maintaining a constellation of 24 operational GPS satellites with a probability of 95 percent or better.”

Moreover, the GPS IIIA design, which would deliver a new GPS civil signal at L1, will require substantial enhancements to existing satellite capabilities, including a 10-time increase in military signal power and a larger bus to accommodate future GPS increments IIIB and IIIC.

Even before the 2014 first GPS IIIA launch, however, the GAO warns that a 20 percent chance will arise in 2011-2012 that the constellation could drop below 24 space vehicles (SVs) as older satellites begin failing faster than they can be replaced.

Based on an 18-month investigation by the GAO, the report’s conclusions merely confirm what has been a growing awareness within the U.S. Air Force and the GPS community that continuing delays in modernization efforts are hobbling the program. Indeed, a 2005 Defense Science Board Task Force identified many of these problems, predicted the risks now seeming even more likely to occur, and made similar recommendations.

Congressional Interest
The study was requested by the national security and foreign affairs subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government, which held a hearing May 7 on the topic, “GPS: Can We Avoid a Gap in Service?” Chaplain, Air Force, Department of Defense (DoD), and industry representatives provided testimony at the hearing.

In his opening statement at the hearing, subcommittee chairman John Tierney (D-Massachusetts) said, “The reality is that from an acquisition perspective, we are nearing the eleventh hour. The President’s fiscal 2010 budget terminates funding for the primary GPS back-up system, LORAN. That puts a lot of pressure on DOD to ensure GPS meets all user needs—a precarious position to be in if a gap is looming.”

“GPS is a critical asset to our economy and to our security,” Tierney added. “It’s unfortunate that we may find ourselves in a position of weakness because we have not yet learned to get our procurement house in order.”

In a presentation to the subcommittee, Maj. Gen. Neil McCasland, U.S. Air Force director of space acquisition, said that the problems with the Block IIF — which have more than doubled the program cost to $1.6 billion from $729 million — have “propelled the Air Force to launch a campaign to rebuild our confidence in the schedule of this critical space system through a renewed focus on mission assurance.”

“A key element of our strategy is to deliver the first GPS III satellite to a known schedule,” McCasland said. “We worked hard with our requirements arm, our industrial partners, and our fiscal planners to ensure we integrated every lesson from the past to create a high-confidence GPS III schedule.”

More Problems than Just the Satellites
Aside from possible launch delays and constellation decline, the GAO report criticized the failure of the GPS program to “synchronize” the acquisition and development of the next generation of GPS satellites with the corresponding timelines of the ground control segment and military user equipment. The result: a likelihood that the modernized military signal (M-code) will be available for more than a decade “before user equipment will be fielded that can take strategic advantage of it.”

The report attributed the problems to a variety of causes: a bungled acquisition reform introduced in the 1990s (Total System Performance Responsibility), turnover in military program leadership, diffuse responsibilities for GPS system development within the DoD, reprogramming of GPS funds to other DoD program (or from GPS control segment and user equipment programs to backfill cost overruns in the space segment), fielding of immature technologies, post-contract engineering changes (“mission creep”), and so on.

Acknowledging Air Force and DoD efforts in recent years to improve the situation, the GAO recommended that the secretary of defense “appoint a single authority to oversee the development of the GPS system, including DoD space, ground control, and user equipment assets, to ensure that the program is well executed and resourced and that potential disruptions are minimized.”

According to the GAO, that the appointee “should have authority to ensure DoD space, ground control, and user equipment are synchronized to the maximum extent practicable; and coordinate with the existing positioning, navigation, and timing [PNT] infrastructure to assess and minimize potential service disruptions should the satellite constellation decrease in size for an extended period of time.”

In a presentation to the House subcommittee hearing, a DoD official said that “Deputy Secretary of Defense [William] Lynn has “reaffirmed” that the assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration — ASD(NII) — “is designated with authority and responsibility for all aspects” of the Global Positioning System.
Until recently, the ASD(NII) — as well as the DoD’s chief information officer — was John Grimes, a holdover from the Bush administration. President Obama has not yet named a replacement, who must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

In a response to the GAO recommendations, DoD’s officials noted that “under oversight of the ASD(NII),” the U.S. Air Force is the single acquisition agent with responsibility for synchronized modernization of GPS space, ground control, and military user equipment.

Because that position essentially restates the current status, including a 2008 revised DoD directive (4650.05) on PNT, further efforts would appear needed to increase the leverage that ASD(NII) has over the program.

On May 8 Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz announced their plan for improving the service’s acquisition efforts. The plan outlines five initiatives with 33 actions that are intended to “ensure rigor, reliability and transparency across the Air Force acquisition enterprise.” Among those actions are an increase in the size and improvement in the training and experience of the Air Force’s professional acquisition corps, which has been cut by 41 percent over the past 20 years.

The post GAO Says GPS III Launch Delay Could Drop Constellation below 24 Satellites appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Signal anomalies characterized by the U.S. Air Force as “out of family” transmissions will keep the latest GPS satellite from being declared healthy for months, if ever.

The report on space vehicle number (SVN) 49 by the GPS Wing’s chief engineer, Lt. Col. David Goldstein to the European Navigation Conference in Naples, Italy, on May 4 mixed bad news with glad.

Also known as Block IIR-20(M), the spacecraft carries the demonstration payload for the new civil GPS L5 signal. The March 24 launch probably represented the last chance to meet an International Telecommunications Union (ITU) deadline for securing primary rights to use of the RF band by GPS.

Signal anomalies characterized by the U.S. Air Force as “out of family” transmissions will keep the latest GPS satellite from being declared healthy for months, if ever.

The report on space vehicle number (SVN) 49 by the GPS Wing’s chief engineer, Lt. Col. David Goldstein to the European Navigation Conference in Naples, Italy, on May 4 mixed bad news with glad.

Also known as Block IIR-20(M), the spacecraft carries the demonstration payload for the new civil GPS L5 signal. The March 24 launch probably represented the last chance to meet an International Telecommunications Union (ITU) deadline for securing primary rights to use of the RF band by GPS.

A healthy L5 signal began transmitting on April 10. However, other GPS signals being broadcast by the satellite — particularly those at the L1 frequency — are demonstrating larger than expect pseudorange errors that appear to be elevation-dependent, Goldstein said. That is, they vary with the varying elevation angle of the satellite as it rises and sets in the sky.

The Air Force detected the anomalies on April 9, the day before the L5 broadcasts began. That suggests the out-of-family problem may stem from a fundamental mechanical difficulty, which can’t be fixed now that the spacecraft is in orbit, not a transient problem with the electrical system that could be remedied by system operators.

Because 18 other Block IIR satellites built by Lockheed Martin are on orbit and performing well, a substantial likelihood also exists that something about the L5 payload creating the problem.

The GPS Wing has a team “sorting out the problem,” Goldstein said, and predicted that several more months would pass “before we finish all of the trouble-shooting.”

The problem poses no immediate problem for GPS users. Thirty GPS satellites are currently in orbit and broadcasting healthy signals; however, the full operational constellation for GPS only requires 24 satellites.

“We’re in no hurry because of our overpopulated constellation,” Goldstein told the ENC audience. SVN49 officially remains in the early orbit check-out phase. However, the Air Force “harvested” the pseudorandom noise (PRN) code number (PRN01) of a GPS satellite alread in orbit to use on SVN49. That reduced the constellation by one.

However, the uncertainty created by the signal anomalies will probably delay launches of the last modernized Block IIR satellite, currently scheduled for August, and the first next-generation Block IIF, which had been expected to be launched late this year or early in 2010.

The demonstration L5 transmissions vary in a number of ways from the operational L5 signal specification. In its forthcoming May/June issue, Inside GNSS will carry two articles on initial observations of the L5 and other SVN49 signals by researchers at Stanford University and Ohio University.

Under any foreseeable circumstances, SVN49 will not broadcast L5 forever, Goldstein said. Once the Block IIF satellites — on which the signal is standard — are launched, the demonstration payload will be switched off.

The post GPS SVN49 and L5 Signal: A Success with Problems appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

A proposal now before the European Parliament and Council of the European Union would complete the transformation of the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) from the leading executive agency for the Galileo program into a diminished subsidiary of the European Commission (EC).

A proposal now before the European Parliament and Council of the European Union would complete the transformation of the European GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA) from the leading executive agency for the Galileo program into a diminished subsidiary of the European Commission (EC).

That pre-eminent role, envisioned under the strategy of a public-private partnership (PPP) abandoned more than two years ago, would have seen the GSA sign and oversee a contract with a private consortium building and operating the Galileo system and its precursor European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS).

Instead, under the terms of EC Communication 139 released March 24, the GSA would be renamed the GNSS Agency with the EC holding veto power over its administrative board and the agency’s primary mission reduced to market research and promotion of Galileo as well as conducting security audits. On April 1, ownership of the EGNOS infrastructure was transferred to the EC, and a Brussels-based company, the European Satellite Services Provider (ESSP SaS), was entrusted with operation of the system.

Galileo is now being developed as a fully public procurement with a €3.4 billion budget. The European Space Agency (ESA) is acting as the technical design authority and prime contractor.

The EC characterizes its communication as an effort to remove contradictions and ambiguities between the 2004 regulation establishing the GSA and a 2008 regulation outlining the public procurement for Galileo’s deployment. Although the 2008 regulation “implicitly and comprehensively amended the Supervisory Authority’s responsibilities, it had no impact on its internal organisation, and the Commission’s influence in this area continues to be very limited,” says the March 24 communication. “

“In order to ensure that the Authority acts while respecting the ‘Commission’s role as manager of the programmes’ and ‘in accordance with guidelines issued by the Commission,’ as is now provided for by Regulation (EC) No 683/2008,” the communication continues, “it is necessary to make changes to increase the Commission’s influence within the Authority’s internal organisation.”

Although the communication says the reorganized GSA would continue as a “Community Agency” — that is, one under the control of European member states rather than the EC, the EU’s executive branch — the far-reaching changes that it proposes would profoundly alter its political and legal status.
These changes include giving the EC representative on the GSA/GNSS Agency’s administrative board a vote equal to half of that body’s votes, with the 27 representatives of the member states having the other half.

Moreover, the term of the agency’s executive director would be shortened to four years from the current five. Under that provision, the administrative board would have to decide by this July whether to renew the term of Pedro Pedreira, GSA executive director appointed to the post in July 2005, which might be a very uncertain prospect given the communication’s assertion of is limited influence under the present GSA leadership.

The 2004 regulation gave final authority to the GSA’s executive director, “who shall be completely independent in the exercise of his/her duties, without prejudice to the respective competencies of the Commission and the Administrative Board.”

The proposed new regulation replaces that description with the following: “The Agency shall be managed by its Executive Director, who shall carry out his duties under the supervision of the Administrative Board in accordance with the guidelines provided to the Agency by the Commission.”

The communication calls for abolition of the GSA’s Scientific and Technical Committee, which had charged with delivering opinions on technical questions or on proposals involving major changes in the design of the European GNSS system and making recommendations on the modernization of the system. Those responsibilities have been moved — along with many of the GSA’ technical staff — to the EC or to the ESA Evolutions project that is investigating the technical design for a next-generation system with €105 million in funding from ESA members over the next two years.

The EC’s proposal would also replace the GSA’s System Safety and Security Committee with a Security Accreditation Committee for European GNSS Systems, chaired by an EC representative and with members from the EU nations. With oversight from this committee, the GNSS Agency would be charged with setting up a Galileo Security Center that would begin operation in 2012.

The new regulation has had its first reading in the European Parliament and been referred to committee.

The post EC Proposes Big Changes for GSA within Galileo Program appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Launch of a second modernized Compass (Beidou 2) satellite on April 14 — this one a geostationary spacecraft — marks the return of China to its GNSS launch program two years after the initial venture into space.

Designated Compass G2 — reflecting the geostationary nature of its intended orbital position about 22,300 miles above the equator, the satellite lifted off at 16:16 UTC aboard a Long March 3C rocket from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua.

Launch of a second modernized Compass (Beidou 2) satellite on April 14 — this one a geostationary spacecraft — marks the return of China to its GNSS launch program two years after the initial venture into space.

Designated Compass G2 — reflecting the geostationary nature of its intended orbital position about 22,300 miles above the equator, the satellite lifted off at 16:16 UTC aboard a Long March 3C rocket from the Xichang launch base in southwestern China’s Sichuan province, according to China’s state news agency Xinhua.

The satellite is the first of 10 that China has previously announced it plans to launch over the next year and a half. The second “Compass” satellite was developed by the China Academy of Space Technology, which is part of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation.

An April 17 news report by Xinhua, quoted Cao Chong, chief engineer of the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, as estimating that the first phase of Compass, scheduled to complete a regional capability by the end next year, would cost more than US$1.463 billion.

“I think the Compass system might cost China several dozen billion yuan," said Cao, who works with the China Satellite Navigation Engineering Center responsible for building the Compass system. “The first phase alone could cost more than 10 billion yuan,” Cao said.

Although the news reports characterized the most recent launch as the second Compass (Beidou-2) satellite, some reports suggest that a geostationary satellite launched February 3, 2007, and stationed at 58.75º E, will also be part of the system.
China launched its first Compass middle-earth-orbiting (MEO) satellite in April 2007, joining several geostationary Beidou-1 satellites that have been launched since 2000.

The new spacecraft are more robust than the first-generation Beidou satellites, and like the other GNSS systems they operate using passive, one-way transmissions with receiver equipment calculating positions using trilateration techniques

In contrast, BeiDou-1 is based on active two-way transmissions between the user and the central control station via the system’s geostationary satellites, similar to the radiodetermination satellite service (RSS) provided by the Geostar Corporation and successor U.S. systems in the 1990s.

The Beidou-1 technology requires the central control station polls the users via two satellites. When the central station receives the responding signals from the user equipment, it calculates the user’s two-dimensional position based on the time difference between the two signals.

Beidou-1 has been operating for five years and played an important role in the rescue work after the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan province last year. Beidou-1 has more than 40,000 registered customers, with an expected 60,000 more to join in a couple of years, according to Zhao Kangning, deputy director of China’s satellite navigation application management center.

China has applied to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for priority use of several bands in which Europe’s Galileo program has planned to transmit its encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS) signals for potential use in public safety, security, and military applications. As currently proposed, Compass signals would occupy/overlay part or all of inteded PRS frequencies, including Compass B1 at 1559-1563 MHZ (overlaying lower part of Galileo E1A), Compass B1-2 at 1587–1591 (overlaying part of upper Galileo E1), and B3, a 24 MHz bandwidth centered at 1268.52 (overlaying a portion of Galileo E6).

The post China Launches Second Compass (Beidou-2) Satellite in $1.46 Billion First Phase appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.

Here’s an interesting document: Preliminary observations on “The management of the Galileo programme’s development and validation phase,” adopted at its January 21–22 meeting by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

If you’re the kind of person who wakes up in a strange room after a night on the town and wonders how you got there, you’ll want to take in the full 50-page report and six addenda.

Here’s an interesting document: Preliminary observations on “The management of the Galileo programme’s development and validation phase,” adopted at its January 21–22 meeting by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

If you’re the kind of person who wakes up in a strange room after a night on the town and wonders how you got there, you’ll want to take in the full 50-page report and six addenda.

However, if you’re the sort who, in those circumstances, just wants to know what’s going on and how to get out of there, you probably can get by with a lot less reading. The “Lessons for the Future” and five recommendations take up only 3-1/2 pages of the material.

For one who lived through the first 15 years of Europe’s GNSS efforts, the ECA report is a kind of post-mortem filled with ruefulness and might-have-beens.

The Galileo program is five years behind schedule and facing a current overrun of €2.25 billion (US$3.06 billion) above the 2000 cost projection of €3.33 billion for the definition, development and validation, and deployment phases.

And the auditors review and document the journey in achingly thorough detail — chronicling the delays, unanticipated costs, and postponed deadlines — before concluding that the roadmap to implementation, operation, and replenishment of the system is still not well defined.

The ECA is an official, but not particularly well-known organization based in Luxembourg and given powers under various European Union (EU) treaties to carry out independent audits of programs and their use of EU finances. In the ECA’s own words, “As the EU’s external auditor [the ECA] contributes to improving EU financial management and acts as the independent guardian of the financial interests of the citizens of the Union.”

Based on audit work was performed during 2007 and 2008, the preliminary observations will become a final published report to be made public within the coming months.

Although the audit covers the program from its origins in the early 1990s up to the end of 2008, it focuses on the EU’s satellite navigation programs — Galileo and the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) — during the years 2003 to 2006.

And, through the eyes of the auditors, it’s not a pretty sight. Section headings in the table of contents foreshadow the ultimately dreary conclusions: “Concession negotiations failed,” “Technological development activities delayed and over budget,” “Limited usefulness of RTD [research and technological development] activities,” “EGNOS integration only partially successful,” “Poor public-sector governance.”

Particular attention (and opprobrium) is reserved for the effort to form a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) that sought to derive two-thirds of the cost of deploying the system from a private concessionaire that would operate the system at a profit. The PPP effort fell apart in mid-2006, when the program sponsors — the European Commission (EC) on behalf of the EU and the European Space Agency (ESA) — decided to transform the program into a more traditional public procurement.

The auditors point out that, despite recommendations in two studies prepared by PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the EC did not investigate traditional public procurement. Moreover, neither the EC nor the GJU constructed a public sector comparator, that is, an estimate for comparative purposes of what the project would cost if traditional procurement methods were used.

Instead, the ECA concludes (as was widely assumed at the time), “The Commission proposed, and the [EU] Council adopted, a PPP for the deployment and operational phases of Galileo in order to obtain a political consensus.”

The auditors cite the unclear mandate and conflicted governance structure of the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) established in September 2003 to define technical requirements and oversee construction of prototype satellites and in-orbit validation (IOV), select private operators for Galileo and negotiate the concession agreement, oversee the RTD projects, gain the participation of non-EU members, and develop a business plan for Galileo operation.

The GJU was phased out in December 2006 without having accomplished many of these tasks. The causes for this failure, according to the ECA, were numerous:

• The presence of the ESA as half of the GJU’s governing board while also serving as the lead agency for the IOV activities that the GJU was supposed to supervise “resulted in a lack of accountability.
• The “interventions” by member states in the management of individual program components.
• The GJU’s acceptance of a merger of the two private consortia seeking the concession contract, thereby eliminating the benefits of competitive bidding.
• Incomplete budgets; for example, the November 2000 proposal to the European Council lacked a contingency reserve, made no allowance for the EC’s €50 million contribution to the GJU, and didn’t anticipate security requirements that ultimately added €120 million to overall costs.

The ECA is blunt in its criticism of the EC, which it characterizes as “the programme’s key promoter.”

“The Commission failed to provide adequate leadership,” says the preliminary report. “Whereas, between 1999 and 2004, the Commission actively played its role of initiating the programme and getting it started, momentum was lost from 2005 onwards,” states the report. “Delays and cost overruns became apparent in the course of 2005, but no corrective action was taken until March 2007.”

The report identifies several main EC failings: not reconciling the “multiple objectives [of the the Galileo program], which resulted in a diverse range of stakeholder expectations”; not providing for risk management at the outset; failure to establish a permanent organization early on, instead charging six successive temporary structures with responsibilities for program management and technical support; not taking timely decisions or critically review and monitor the GJU’s progress reports.

Auditors charged that the EC lacked a “long-term strategic vision for the EGNOS and Galileo” programs but focused instead on short-term goals, for instance, being preoccupied “with navigating the programme from one Council meeting to the next. . . .”

Noting that the Galileo program organization “has changed markedly since 2007,” the ECA five recommendations reveal a continuing concern that the EC leadership has not completely figured out what it needs to do next.

Recommendation 1
To gain authority as a programme manager, the Commission should adapt its resources and its legal and financial instruments to the specificities of the development and management of an industrial programme:
(a) the quantity and expertise of its human resources should be commensurate with its task as programme manager;
(b) an appropriate EU-ESA cooperation framework should be established;
(c) the Commission should ensure it has the financial instruments to fund infrastructure (other than via grants) and to commit itself to bearing the yearly operating and replenishment costs of this infrastructure over a long time horizon;
(d) programme governance should be such as to enable the programme manager to perform its tasks coherently (define expectations, grant powers and verify performance).

Recommendation 2
The Commission should urgently clarify the programme’s political objectives and translate them into strategic and operational objectives that will provide Galileo with a solid roadmap from now until beyond full deployment. For example:
(a) How should Galileo be positioned as a commercial system? Is it required to break even financially or will it require continuing public-sector support? Is it about maximising revenue generation, or maximising macroeconomic benefits and serving the whole Galileo value chain through services and goods generated by its applications?
(b) How will EGNOS and Galileo relate to each other once Galileo is fully operational? Will they exist side by side thus ensuring redundancy in service provision, or will EGNOS be dismantled?

Recommendation 3
The Commission should take sufficient time to prepare the commercial operation phase, drawing on best practice in the Member States, considering various models for private-sector initiative and taking account of experience in comparable sectors.

Recommendation 4
The Commission should ensure that the following issues are addressed:
(a) analysis, consolidation and validation of relevant and stable user requirements;
(b) development of enabling actions (such as the necessary legal and regulatory framework);
(c) promotion of EGNOS as a showcase for Galileo, by certifying EGNOS’ SoL [safety of life] service and making the EGNOS and Galileo exploitation models compatible;
(d) development of a clear and compatible pricing policy or revenue model for Galileo and EGNOS services, and a third-party liability policy.

Recommendation 5
For any future joint undertakings and industrial programmes in which the EU resolves to engage, the Commission should:
(a) ensure that there are clear and compelling reasons for creating a joint undertaking;
(b) ensure that all realistic options on private-sector cooperation have been properly considered;
(c) endeavour to establish a governance structure that does not impede proper programme management by the joint undertaking.

The post European Court of Auditors Lambastes Galileo Satellite Navigation Program appeared first on Inside GNSS - Global Navigation Satellite Systems Engineering, Policy, and Design.