Galileo edges towards the launch pad
It was at one of those "press breakfasts" in June last year that the top man for satellites at Europe's biggest space company declared that the contract to build should not be split between two suppliers.
Evert Dudok told the croissant-chomping journalists that to do so would :
"I want to be extremely clear: 'there is one winner and one loser, and the winner takes it all' has to be the principle for best value for money - otherwise we will be in a mess. I promise you, we will be in a mess."
What he meant of course was that his company - - should be the winner. They were bullish words, and words which some pointed out at the time could come back to haunt him. On Thursday, they did just that.
The a contract for the production of for the operational Galileo network.
They will all be built by the / consortium.
Astrium has been given nothing even though it helped build a sophisticated demonstrator () to prove the technology and the four that will showcase the Galileo system.
In a British context, there will now be different emotions in two towns in southern England.
There will be disappointment in Portsmouth where EADS Astrium has done much of its Galileo work, but elation over at Guildford where SSTL will now be involved in an intense five-year project to roll out an operational Galileo.
It guarantees work for about 100 people which is about a third of the company. The total OHB/SSTL contract is worth 566m euros (£510m). Of that, the SSTL
side is worth 236m euros (£212m).
Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) will integrate the payloads.
This means it will fit together all the different parts that make up a sat-nav spacecraft's "brain" - its atomic clocks, signal generators, amplifiers, antennas, etc - before passing this box to OHB System in Germany.
OHB will attach the payload to the spacecraft bus, test the whole set-up before then despatching the completed satellite to Sinnamary in French Guiana where a Soyuz rocket will blast the thing into orbit.
The schedule promised to the EC has the first OHB/SSTL spacecraft coming off the end of the production line in 2012 ready for launch in the October.
After that, they should be pushed out the door at a rate of about one every six weeks.
What does that mean for you and me and increasing numbers of other sat-nav users?
It means that by early 2014, there should be sufficient numbers of spacecraft in orbit for Galileo to really start to make a difference to the performance of space-borne timing and location-based signals.
Devices fitted with GPS and Galileo-enabled chips should be making faster, more accurate fixes.
Manufacturers have been planning for this. You can expect the TomToms and Garmins of the world to start advertising "Galileo compatible" on the boxes.
And with the turn-over rate in new mobile phones, Galileo compatibility should spread quite rapidly through the handheld market as well.
But there's still a long way to go with this story. The Commission asked both OHB/SSTL and Astrium to quote for batches of eight, 14 and 22 satellites.
It has ordered 14 now but there is money in the budget to order more. And eventually a full constellation will have about 30 satellites including in-orbit spares.
Brussels could well turn around to Astrium and say "OK, you provide the second source".
Yes, this could be more expensive than having one supplier, but the Commission has recently made great play of the need for speed.
So much time has been lost through commercial and political squabbling that any benefits that ought to accrue to the European economy from having a more advanced system will be diminished as the Americans, the Russians and the Chinese also pursue next-generation technologies.
And if a technical issue arises in the production of the satellites, the roll-out of the system might not be delayed if there is a dual source. It would, as they say, lower the risks.
In a statement today, the Commission said further satellites would be procured from OHB or EADS Astrium "".
The next major event to watch out for in the Galileo story is the first flight of a Soyuz rocket from its new . This should happen mid-year. If that goes well, it will enable Galileo to proceed with the launch of Astrium's first two pathfinders, or "In-orbit Validation" (IOV) spacecraft, before the year's end.
These two IOVs, and an additional pair to fly in 2011, will prove the Galileo system works end to end.
Watch this space.
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