Galileo

Two new Galileo satellites were launched from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 4 December 2021.

The 2021-12-04 launch increased the Galileo constellation to 28 satellites in orbit.

Europe’s Galileo navigation constellation had two pairs of satellites (Galileo 29,30 and Galileo 30,31) scheduled for Soyuz ST-B launches from the Guiana Space Centre in 2022.

Ariane 6 has been designed to launch Galileo satellites and can launch those satellites in 2023.

SSTL has delivered 34 GNSS payloads for the European Galileo constellation.

EGNOS v3 is being prepared for implementation later this decade (by 2028) and will also use Galileo signals and provide increased resilience to security threats.

Two pairs of Galileo satellites previously set to launch on Soyuz are expected to launch on Ariane 6.

European Space Agency expects to decide sometime in the first half of 2023 how to launch the next Galileo satellites, which are currently manifested on the second Ariane 6 flight.

Galileo’s HAS is designed with two service levels, with Service Level 1 already available and Service Level 2 intended for rollout across Europe with additional ionospheric corrections.

GPS 3 satellites provide military users extra protection from jamming and provide a more advanced L1C signal for civilian users that is interoperable with Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites.

SBAS systems use satellite connectivity, land-based infrastructure, and software to enhance standard GPS/Galileo accuracy from 5–10 m to as little as 0.1 m.

Satellite-Based Augmentation Systems can improve GPS/Galileo accuracy from 5–10 metres to as little as 10 centimetres.

Thales Alenia Space (Italy) and Airbus Defence & Space (Germany) were awarded satellite-building contracts in May 2021 to create two independent families of satellites amounting to 12 Galileo Second Generation satellites in total.

Ariane 5 launched a dozen of Europe’s Galileo navigation satellites using just three Ariane 5 launches.

Thales has worked with the European Space Agency on Galileo security for more than 20 years.

ESA and the European Commission are considering using Falcon 9 to launch Galileo navigation satellites.

The European Commission completed the launch contract in July and approved a European Space Agency proposal to use Falcon 9 to launch the Galileo satellites.

The European Commission will spend 180,000,000 EUR ($192,000,000) on the Falcon 9 launches for Galileo satellites.

The European Union is finalizing a deal with SpaceX to launch four Galileo navigation satellites in 2024.

Discussions to use a non-European rocket such as Falcon 9 for Galileo launches occurred because of delays in Ariane 6, the retirement of Ariane 5, and the withdrawal of Soyuz following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.