Inmarsat announced it has been selected to manage the company that will look after Galileo’s global network operations, including performance monitoring and operations security.
The European Union satnav project is a joint venture between the public and private sectors. A consortium of eight aerospace companies and satellite operators–Inmarsat, Aena, Alcatel, EADS Space Services, Finmeccanica, Hispasat, Thales and TeleOp–have signed up to help develop Galileo, the European equivalent of GPS.
The consortium has approved Inmarsat to take on overall management leadership of the Galileo Operations Company in the UK, the arm of the business that will be tasked with managing global network operations.
The first test satellite for Galileo, called Giove-A, has been built by Surrey Satellite Technology in England and was launched into orbit from Kazakhstan on December 28. Galileo will comprise a global network of about 30 satellites, with an array of monitoring and information stations, including control centers in Germany and Italy.