Europe plans 30 satellites for new navigation system
Galileo, the satellite navigation system planned for Europe, will consist of 30 satellites in medium Earth orbit, possibly backed up by three or four geostationary satellites over the European region. After intensive study reviewing different system architectures, ESA and the EC agreed on this basic system design in August in Frascati, Italy.
This final meeting of the GalileoSat Baseline Design Review (BDR) on 3 August was attended by over 150 people from ESA member state delegations, from the European Commission (EC) and from industry. The baseline selected is for 30 satellites in three planes including one active spare per plane, in medium Earth orbit. The decision on additional geostationary satellites will be taken after further studies on the integration on EGNOS have been completed. The Galileo satellite ground segment has two main elements:
- the network control element responsible for the navigation mission and controlling the constellation of satellites
- the European Galileo integrity element which is responsible for determining in an independent way the health of the Galileo constellation and to provide users (by means of the so-called Integrity signal) with accuracy guarantees.
