PONTE VEDRA, Fla. — The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved its 50-percent share of a billion-dollar satellite navigation system and is now awaiting word from the European Union (EU) on whether that body is willing to live up to its end of the bargain.
Meeting late Dec. 20 at ESA’s Paris headquarters, the agency’s ruling council approved an immediate payment of $45 million (50 million euros) for the
Galileo satellite navigation constellation. The council also approved a second, $455.7 million (500 million-euro) contribution to be freed in late 2001 for work on Galileo's 30-satellite constellation.
But the council said its support was contingent on EU transport ministers approving an identical sum for Galileo. The ministers are meeting in Brussels and are expected to give a clear yes-or-no signal on Galileo before their meeting breaks up later today.
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Galileo is envisioned as a system to be operational in 2008 and to have a performance similar to the U.S.
Global Positioning System (GPS) that will be available then. EU and ESA governments have witnessed the explosion of civilian, commercial applications of GPS and hope that European companies will better profit from a European system than they have so far from GPS.
The EU expects that the commercial applications of satellite navigation will be so numerous that private industry will be able to finance a substantial minority of Galileo's estimated $3.18 billion (3.5 billion euros) in development costs.
The ESA council also agreed Dec. 20 to spend $72 million (80 million euros) to launch ESA's Artemis navigation and data-relay satellite aboard an Ariane 5 rocket this spring. The satellite had been scheduled to fly free of charge on Japan's H-2A vehicle in February. In return, Japan was to have been given access to 40 percent of Artemis' communications capability. But Japanese authorities have
postponed H-2A flights following a series of technical problems with the rocket.
ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina said Dec. 21 that the agency expects that the 80 million euros in launch costs for Artemis will be returned from revenues generated by commercial customers for the satellite, which has an L-band payload that has already attracted prospective users.
Artemis is substantially over budget, and its original launch-vehicle budget was consumed by excess costs associated with the satellite's development. This forced ESA to seek a cooperation agreement with Japan. Artemis is already built and has been in storage, awaiting launch, for more than a year.
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