Galileo Update

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Inauguration of Galileo station at Kourou

The site of a ground station for Galileo inside the Guiana Space Centre (CSG), near Kourou in French Guiana, has been inaugurated. The site, which was made available by France’s Centre national d’études spatiales (CNES), will play an essential role in the setting up of the Galileo system, since it will accommodate the most comprehensive of the Galileo ground segment stations. The Kourou station will consist of a telemetry, tracking and command (TT&C) station to monitor and control the Galileo constellation satellites, a sensor station (GSS) for acquisition of the satellite navigation signals, and two uplink stations (ULS) for transmission of navigation and integrity messages to the satellites. In all, the Galileo ground segment for the in-orbit validation phase (IOV) will comprise 18 sensor stations, 5 uplink stations, 2 telemetry, tracking and command stations, and 2 Galileo Control Centres (GCCs). The Control Centres will be situated at Fucino in Italy and Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany. The site was inaugurated in the presence of René Oosterlinck, Director of the Galileo programme and navigationrelated activities at ESA, and of Joël Barre,
Director of CNES/CSG. www.esa.int

SE Asian Centre on GNSS

The Galileo Space Advisory Council has asked the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok to prepare a sustainability strategy for the next five years for the Southeast Asia Centre on GNSS. The centre is being established under the SEAGAL (the South-East Asia centre on European GNSS for international cooperation And Local development ) project. SEAGAL is funded by the European Union under the European Commission’s Seventh Research Framework program. The main objective of the project is the definition of an implementation plan for a Galileo collaboration centre to support the educational, commercial and technical needs of South-East Asia. The partners in the project are AIT, Istituto Superior Mario Boella and Politcno Di Torino, both in Italy, the Spanish Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya and the French Universite, Franche-Comte as well as Hanoi University of Technology. http://galileosystem.blogspot.com

Galileo concert promotes satellite navigation programmes

A ‘Galileo Concert’ held in Austria harmoniously blended information about Europe’s space navigation programmes with a classical piano recital. With wine tasting and food as part of the mix, the event attracted 330 people to the Austrian Academy of Sciences building in Vienna. It provides an example of an alternative way of promoting the benefits of EGNOS and Galileo to the general public. Connecting technology with the arts and culture draws a broader range of people to information events about Europe’s two satellite navigation programmes, says Elisabeth Klaffenböck, a technical expert with the Austrian Research Promotion Agency and the country’s Aeronautics and Space Agency. Each year the two organisations hold four to five events to inform people about the EGNOS and Galileo programmes. The event in Vienna was the first to feature music, food and drink. www.gsa.europa.eu