On Thursday 19 January , the European Space Agency and Galileo Industries GmbH sign a Ä950 million contract that will pave the way for the operational deployment of Galileo. The ceremony will take place at the German Ministry of Transport (Berlin) in the presence of Minister Wolfgang Tiefensee, ESAís Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain and top industry representatives.
After the successful launch of GIOVE-A on 28 December 2005 and the acquisition of the first ""Galileo"" signal on 12 January 2006, Galileo is now well underway from the drawing board into space. The contract to be signed on 19 January covers the development and in-orbit validation of the constellation's first four operational satellites. Today's transmission includes highlight images of the Giove-A launch and an outline of Galileo, as pre-event background footage for the signature.

ëGiove ñ the clock is tickingí
10 00 00 Generic
10 00 40 Start of A-roll
10 00 50 With ESAís launch of Giove three days after Christmas, one of Europeís most ambitious technology projects ever began to materialize.
10 00 59 Silent, yet unstoppable. The clocks are now ticking for the deployment of Galileo, Europeís own satellite navigation system. Since January 12th, the day the signal generator onboard the Giove-A satellite was switched on, the first of the Galileo test satellites has been sending valuable navigation signals. And it will continue to do so round-the-clock, every day of the year while simultaneously testing performance in the radiation levels of the selected orbits..
10 01 29 Thanks to the atomic clocks installed onboard, the signals transmitted by navigation satellites are extremely precise. A small cheap receiver will suffice to determine a personís position on the globe or the direction of a moving object, with an accuracy of one metre or less.
10 01 48 Expectations are extremely high