Carlo des Dorides took up his position as executive director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) on February 1, 2011. In the nine years since then, the Galileo programme has progressed from a project on paper to an operational programme with over a billion users around the globe. As his term at the helm of the Agency draws to an end, the GSA executive director looks back at the successes and challenges of the past nine years and speaks about his hopes for the future.
Chip manufacturers are very aware of the opportunities that dual frequency offers and, correspondingly, the market has witnessed the launch of a range of mass-market dual-frequency chips targeted at various applications. In turn, smartphone manufacturers also understand the benefits that these chips provide in terms of positioning accuracy for location based services and are eager to pass on these benefits to their users.
Many promising geomatics applications benefit from the European navigation programmes Galileo and EGNOS. Land, marine and mine surveying, infrastructure monitoring and mapping and GIS applications that require high precision GNSS are all enabled by both the EU satellite navigation systems. The European GNSS Agency (GSA), together with Geospatial Media, invites you to participate in a free webinar - EGNSS for Geomatics – where you can learn about everything that EGNSS has to offer for geomatics.
The Galileo Return Link Service, which allows people in distress to receive automatic acknowledgement that their signal has been received, was declared operational at the 12th European Space Conference, in the Egmont Palace in Brussels on January 21.
A recent project funded by the European Commission has carried out technical and financial studies aiming at supporting the standardisation process for EGNSS in drones (also known as UAS or RPAS), in line with the Space Strategy for Europe regarding fostering the use of EGNSS in aviation.
With the declaration of Galileo Initial Services in December 2016, Galileo officially moved to the provision of live services and EGNOS has been operating successfully since 2009, European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (EGNSS) services are now experiencing an unprecedented acceleration in market uptake. During EU Space Week 2019 in Helsinki the European GNSS Agency (GSA) presented the latest developments for both services, and sought feedback from users of position, navigation and time (PNT) solutions and the organisations and institutions involved in the management, service provision and security of EGNSS, to build better services.
The European GNSS Agency (GSA) Executive Director has been awarded the Karel Kramar Medal by the Czech Prime Minister. The honour is awarded as a token of gratitude for demonstrable service in the Czech Republic.
A major theme running through EU Space Week 2019 in Helsinki was the wealth of innovative space-based applications, products and services being created in Europe. The ‘New Space’ sector is full of bright ideas and creative people, but turning a brilliant concept into a profitable enterprise is not easy. Fortunately, Space Week provided a wide range of opportunities for space innovators to develop ideas, meet investors and network with partners. One session allowed entrepreneurs to pitch their ideas to business angels, venture capitalists and other sources of public and private investment.
The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) has issued an Invitation to Tender (ITT) for a planned call for a new service contract to assess the feasibility of an EGNSS-based safety service for the rail sector beyond 2022 which would enable the rationalisation of rail signalling infrastructure.
This has been a year of tremendous growth for the GSA, Galileo, EGNOS and the European Space Programme as a whole. We hit the ground running in 2019, buoyed by a wave of optimism following the successful European Space Week, held in in Marseille last December.
Even though the General Aviation (GA) community undertakes millions of flights on aircraft equipped with GNSS-receivers, it is not taking full advantage of the technology. It is a priority of the European GNSS Agency (GSA) to support GA by facilitating instrument procedures with EGNOS. As a first step the GSA has identified enablers and blocking points along with aviation stakeholders and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
When an emergency or a disaster hits a city or region, the priorities are to care for the wounded, restore infrastructure, provide logistics and basic services, and then to restore livelihoods and reconstruct communities. European GNSS – Galileo and EGNOS – supports applications and the delivery of critical services during the four key phases of the disaster management life cycle: preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation.
GNSS is a key enabler of precision agriculture, allowing farmers to drive their tractors along parallel lines, avoid overlaps and gaps in field cultivation, and reduce their fatigue thanks to satellite-enabled autopilot. GNSS also helps to reduce agriculture’s ecological footprint – a win-win situation for society as a whole. Thanks to Galileo´s dual frequency and authentication capability, it can also help farmers and authorities in the frame of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The drone market is booming and is set to outstrip any other GNSS user base in aviation and open up new business opportunities for application developers, according to a White Paper on European Global Navigation Satellite Systems (EGNSS) for drones operations, produced by the European GNSS Agency (GSA).
The second day of the EU Space Week event in Helsinki opened with an overview of the final tranche of project calls under the Horizon 2020 space programme. The final Horizon 2020 EGNSS (Galileo and EGNOS) calls are now open, with a closing date of 5 March 2020. The session covered research and innovation topics across Copernicus, EGNOS and Galileo programmes and also took a look to the future with Horizon Europe.
