ESA, together with its Member States and European industry and the EU, has been pioneering satellite navigation for our continent since the late 1980s, aimed at enhancing positioning accuracy and integrity and to reduce Europe's dependence on other systems.
In 1993, engineers from the ESA’s Directorate of Telecommunications gathered in Redu, Belgium to discuss how Europe could establish its own satellite navigation systems. The outcome of this meeting was a plan for a two-track process.
The first track was GNSS-1 (later EGNOS), a satellite overlay system that would augment existing GNSS signals to improve their accuracy. The second track, GNSS-2 (later Galileo), would be a fully independent European satellite navigation system.
The first EGNOS release (so called EGNOS Advanced Operational Capability, EGNOS AOC) was developed by the European Tri-partite Group composed of ESA, Eurocontrol and the European Commission. Under the ARTES-9 programme, which was approved at ESA’s Ministerial Council in 1995, ESA was responsible for the system design, development, validation and qualification, with Eurocontrol defining the mission requirements for civil aviation users and the European Commission contributing financially.
Air traffic management agencies which signed bilateral agreements with ESA, namely AENA (Spain), DFS (Germany), DSNA (France), ENAV (Italy), NATS (United Kingdom), Skyguide (Switzerland) and NAV-EP (Portugal), contributed to the funding which permitted EGNOS (ARTES-9) and created the European Satellite Service Provider (ESSP), the EGNOS operator.
The first generation of EGNOS was developed by a consortium led by Alcatel Space (now Thales Alenia Space) of France. The first EGNOS transponder on the first Inmarsat III was launched from Cape Canaveral, US on 3 April 1996. The second transponder, also on an Inmarsat III satellite, launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan on 6 September 1996. The third EGNOS transponder was launched on ESA’s Artemis mission from Kourou, French Guiana on 12 July 2001.
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the EGNOS ground infrastructure was developed and the system was extensively tested to ensure it would work as intended. Tests were even conducted during the Tour de France, demonstrating the interest of such technology beyond its original mission.
After the successful completion of its development, EGNOS was transferred to the European Commission on 1 April 2009. The system was declared operational for non-safety-critical uses in 2009 and for safety-critical aircraft landing approach uses in 2011. Since 1 January 2014, the European Commission has fully delegated the exploitation of EGNOS to EUSPA.
