5 things you didn't know about Galileo - Geeko

Launched at the end of the 1990s, the project for a GPS made in Europe was almost 10 years behind schedule. Originally, the European Union set itself the objective of bringing its satellite positioning system into service in 2010.

In fact, the service was only partially operational 6 years later and should not be completed until later this year. This delay is explained by the many challenges that Galileo had to face.

European surrealism?

Originally, the European Union wanted to finance the project with private companies up to two thirds. Unfortunately, after several years of negotiations, this did not succeed, although some companies had shown interest.

Beyond the organization of funding, the structure of the project itself was far too complex. A commission had been set up, the Galileo Joint Undertaking, to pilot the project and conduct the calls for tenders, except that the GJU was unable to carry out its mission. She was unable to decide between the two funding consortia in the running. The two offers were finally merged to explode better some time later, in 2007, as the interests of each diverged. Member countries continued to intervene "in the interests of their national industries and have blocked decisions," says the European Court of Auditors.

Ultimately, the European Union decided to fully finance the project with its own funds - although outside countries had invested in the project -, thus becoming the sole owner of Galileo. A bad for a good.

Amazing choices

After the problems of financing and structure appeared the technical concerns. The first launches of experimental satellites were carried out in 2005, thanks to a Russian Soyuz rocket. The first “real” Galileo satellites were sent in 2011 only, again with a Soyuz rocket, which may seem surprising since the European Union has its own space agency (ESA) and its own rockets (Ariane). But Russian rockets cost the European Union less.

Not everything rolled like clockwork with the Russian launchers. In 2014, after a failed launch due to technical problems, satellites sent with Soyuz launchers found themselves in the wrong orbit, which again slowed down the project.

A doubled budget

The budget for the development and launch of Galileo was originally 3.4 billion euros. However, the cumulative delay, the failure to put into orbit and the various disagreements between the member countries have almost doubled the budget. A nice sum to which we must add the annual maintenance costs, 200 million euros, and here we are with a project over 10 billion euros.

Advanced system failure

In July 2019, the European satellite navigation system broke down for several days. A failure that affected the 25 satellites of 26 aircraft in orbit at the time. Only the search and rescue service still had access to European GPS. A failure that occurs at a very advanced stage of the project since Galileo must have 30 satellites over time.

At the time, of the 26 in orbit, 22 were active. Enough to ask questions about the reliability of the system. Hopefully this kind of failure will not happen in the future.

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