Galileo: Spaceopal (Telespazio / DLR-GfR) managing operations of the European satellite navigation program

(To Telespazio)
15/12/16

Spaceopal, a joint venture between Telespazio (Leonardo-Finmeccanica / Thales) and DLR-GfR (subsidiary of the German Space Agency DLR), was awarded the Galileo System Operator (GSOp) by GSA (European GNSS Agency) operations of the European Galileo Navigation and Location Satellite Program.

In the presence of the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs, Elżbieta Bieńkowska, the contract was signed today in Brussels, at the headquarters of the European Commission, by Carlo des Dorides, Executive Director of the GSA, by Giuseppe Lenzo and Simon Plum, respectively CEO and COO of Spaceopal. The contract will have a duration of ten years with a value of up to 1,5 billion euros.

Spaceopal will be responsible for managing the Galileo satellite system and its performance. In particular, the operations and control of the system, its security, the management of the service, the logistics and maintenance of systems and infrastructures, services to support users.

The GSOp contract extends the scope of the activities that Spaceopal has carried out for the Galileo program since 2010 and includes overall responsibility for system operations and global maintenance.

The company will carry out these activities through the two Galileo Fucino Control Centers (at the Piero Fanti Space Center in Telespazio, L'Aquila province) and Oberpfaffenhofen (at the DLR site in Munich), and through the GNSS Service Center (Madrid) and a network of sites and stations distributed around the globe and connected by the Galileo Data Distribution Network.

Spaceopal leads an industrial team that sees the participation, in addition to Telespazio and DLR-GfR, of Vitrociset Belgium, SES Techcom, T-Systems, INECO, CNES, INRIM and TASF, ESOC.

Giuseppe Lenzo, CEO of Spaceopal, said: "Spaceopal is honored and proud that it has been chosen by the GSA as the Galileo system operator for the next ten years. Along with our DLR and Telespazio shareholders, and with our team of partners, we have presented a reliable and highly competitive proposal, bringing together the best skills and capabilities available in Europe. It is a privilege to continue to support the implementation of the first European Space Infrastructure and to contribute to the development of Galileo services for European and international users. "

In addition to the activities planned for the Operations, Spaceopal will provide a fundamental contribution to the development of Galileo services through a GNSS Competence Cluster that will be able to leverage the experience in the sector of Telespazio and DLR-GfR, as well as that of the other industrial partners GSOp and on a set of companies, research institutions and SMEs strongly engaged in application development (Italian Space Agency, Austro Control, BavAIRia, Catapult, Cesah, Deutschen Zentrums für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), ERF, Fraunhofer IIS, Globant, Hexagon, Hexagon Geospatial, IABG, IBM, IFEN, IFSTTAR, Indra, ITS Hessen, KSAT, NSL, Qascom, Scisys, Septentrio, Sogei, SUR, Thales Avionics).