The “Giove B” satellite, propelled by a Russian Soyuz rocket will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the early hours of the morning but a year late.<\/p>\n
The long-delayed European project is meant to challenge the dominance of the US-built Global Positioning System (GPS), which is widely used in satellite navigation devices in vehicles and ships.<\/p>\n
“Today, we sent a clear signal to Europe and the whole world that we are still firmly committed to provide all European citizens and enterprises with a high-quality satellite-navigation service by 2013,” said Radovan Zerjav, transport minister for Slovenia which holds the EU’s rotating presidency.<\/p>\n
“We will create new jobs and Europe will claim its rightful place side by side with the technologically most developed world powers,” he added.<\/p>\n
Work on the project, already running five years behind the initial schedule, stalled last year as cost over-runs piled up, private contractors bickered and member states lobbied for their own industrial interests.<\/p>\n
So far just one purely experimental satellite, with a limited lifespan, has been put in place, in 2005.<\/p>\n
The two experimental satellites are to be followed, some time, by some 30 satellites placed in permanent orbit at an altitude of 20,000 kilometres.<\/p>\n
European Union transport ministers, meeting in Luxembourg Monday, reached a compromise on the role that the European Parliament will play in the management of Galileo, which will be EU-owned.<\/p>\n
The political control of the project will be performed by the EU member states and the European Parliament, with assistance from an informal body dubbed GIP (Galileo Interinstitutional Panel).<\/p>\n
The assembly will adopt the plan at a first reading this month, EU Transport Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.<\/p>\n
With that managerial problem out of the way negotiations should be able to start on handing out contracts for work on the Galileo project to European industry.<\/p>\n
The 3.4 billion euro cake will be divided into six segments consisting of the satellites, launchers, computer programmes, ground stations, control stations and the system’s operation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A second experimental satellite for the EU\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Galileo satellite navigation project will be launched from Kazakhstan on April 27, the European Commission announced on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}