This 12 October two more Galileo satellites will be launched by a Soyuz from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.

They will join the two previous operational Galileo satellites launched a year ago, forming a mini constellation which is needed for the In Orbit Validation (IOV) phase of Galileo. This is a fundamental phase when the European Navigation system really goes from theory to practice, both the satellites and the supporting ground stations working together and being checked in real time.

This video news release explains this new achievement for Galileo with interviews of Javier Benedicto, ESA Galileo Project Manager in English, French and Spanish and Giuliano Gatti, ESA Galileo Space segment Manager in English and Italian.

More background information can be found on: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Galileo_IOV/

The MPEG-2 files are on the ESA ftp server in the folder entitled: ftp://esa.contentcoders.com/mpeg2/Galileo-IOV-27092012/