European Sat-nav Stipulate Awarded

The stipulate to run the satellites that will form Europe's chronicle of GPS has been awarded to SpaceOpal.

The 194m euro (170m) stipulate is the fourth of 6 "work packages" to be voiced as efforts go on to hurl out the Galileo sat-nav system.

The multi-billion euro programme is over bill and sufficient delayed, but the initial booster to infer the network should at last launch next year.

A serve 14 functional satellites are approaching to fly from late 2012.

SpaceOpal is a joint endeavour between the German definite Gesellschaft fr Raumfahrtanwendungen (GfR) and the Italian company Telespazio. GfR was set up by the German space group (DLR) to offer Galileo services.

SpaceOpal sealed the stipulate with the European Space Agency, that is behaving as technical and buying representative on the sat-nav plan is to European Commission.

The company's impasse will engage the day-to-day running of Galileo. It will do this from two Galileo Control Centres in Oberpfaffenhofen, nearby Munich, and Fucino, nearby Rome.

"The stipulate demonstrates the burly commitment and the coherent diplomatic will to emanate an eccentric universal satellite-navigation network in Europe," mentioned DLR chairman, Professor January Woerner.

Contracts to supply the functional satellites themselves, the rockets to launch them, and extra technical and administration encouragement were sealed in January.

The two work packages still excellent casing actions that will guard the position of the heavenly body constellation and look after the timing and navigation information that distortion at the heart of Galileo.

Galileo should have been functional by right away but the plan has run in to innumerable technical, blurb and diplomatic obstacles, inclusive early objections from the US, who think a opponent network to GPS might be used to assault its armed forces.

The venture came really shut to being deserted in 2007 when the public-private partnership put in place to erect and run the plan collapsed.

To keep Galileo alive, EU member-states had to consent to account the whole plan from the open purse. What should have cost European taxpayers no more than 1.8bn euros will right away may cost them in surplus of 5bn euros.

The EU's one after another commitment to the plan notwithstanding serious budgetary and administration failings is formed on the idea that outrageous earnings to the European manage to buy will accumulate from the investment.

Already, GPS is mentioned to have spawned universal markets that are value a few tens of billions of euros annually.

The new European constellation is approaching to lower and expand those markets as sat-nav functionality becomes widespread in consumer gadgets such as mobile phones.

"Independent studies have quantified what the advantages are to Europe - about 90bn euros over the next two decades," mentioned Antonio Tajani, the European Commission vice-president with shortcoming for transport.