LONDON, 19 Dec. 2005. LogicaCMG today announces that it has won a contract by EADS Astrium valued at over 6 million Euros to develop the facility that will control the Galileo constellation of navigation satellites.
Galileo will be Europe's own global navigation satellite system, providing a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control. When fully deployed, Galileo will comprise 30 satellites, and will be inter-operable with the American Global Positioning System (GPS) and Russian GLONASS, the two other global satellite navigation systems.
The Satellite Constellation Control Facility (SCCF) will initially be used to control the four Galileo satellites being developed within the European Space Agency (ESA)'s Galileo In-Orbit Validation (IOV) programme. The design of the facility will allow it to eventually control the full 30-satellite constellation.
The core team for these facilities drew on LogicaCMG company specialists from the UK, the Netherlands and Germany, and on specialist suppliers Terma of Denmark and Siemens of Austria. LogicaCMG will now begin the process of selecting subcontractors from across Europe to supply the components necessary to develop this complex facility in accordance with the procurement procedures laid down by ESA.
The EC and ESA have joined forces to build Galileo, an independent system under civilian control which will be guaranteed to operate at all times, bar the direst emergency. Galileo will be Europe's own global navigation satellite system, providing a highly accurate, guaranteed global positioning service under civilian control, inter-operable with GPS and GLONASS, the two other global satellite navigation systems.
Under ESA contracts the first experimental satellite will be launched in December 2005, and thereafter four operational satellites will be launched in the next few years to validate the basic Galileo space and related ground segment. Once this In-Orbit Validation (IOV) phase has been completed, a Concession Contractor selected by the EC/ESA Galileo Joint Undertaking will procure the remaining satellites and other operational facilities.
The fully deployed Galileo system consists of 30 satellites (27 operational + 3 active spares), positioned in three circular Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) planes at an altitude of 23,616 km above the Earth.
The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) is a joint project of the ESA, EC and Eurocontrol, the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation. EGNOS is Europe's first venture into satellite navigation, and will augment the two military satellite navigation systems now operating, the US GPS and Russian GLONASS systems, making them suitable for safety critical applications such as flying aircraft or navigating ships through narrow channels.
"We know from our experience of working with LogicaCMG on other space programmes such as the Beagle 2 Mars lander and the Skynet 5 military communications satellite that they are a reliable partner who can deliver large programmes of this nature. We believe that their approach to the demanding requirements of the SCCF was low risk, highly cost effective and fully scalable," said Mike Healy, director at EADS Astrium UK, segment prime-contractor for the Galileo Ground Control Segment that contains the SCCF.
Steve Smart, director space and satellite communications at LogicaCMG UK, said: "The Galileo SCCF is the most significant satellite control centre development in Europe of this decade. Building on ESA's SCOS-2000 technology (which we are currently enhancing under a contract awarded in February), we are committed to delivering a state of the art Facility that will control the enormous fleet of Galileo satellites cost effectively and securely for the next 15 years or more."
Cock Overbeek, associate-director space and international defence at LogicaCMG Netherlands, said: "The Galileo programme demands software of the highest integrity, and LogicaCMG has demonstrated this many times already across a range of sectors including space, banking, transport, utilities, manufacturing and defence."
LogicaCMG works in the market of IT services and wireless telecoms. It provides management and IT consultancy, systems integration and outsourcing services to clients across diverse markets including telecoms, financial services, energy and utilities, industry, distribution and transport and the public sector. The company employs around 21,000 staff in offices across 35 countries and has more than 40 years of experience in IT services. For more information, see www.logicacmg.com/uk.
LogicaCMG has been involved in Galileo and EGNOS, for more than 10 years. Its involvement with Galileo has included a contract from ESA as prime-contractor for the design of the ground segment (Phase C0), prototyping the constellation control aspects of the SCCF, definition of the Public Private Partnership arrangements for ESA and the European Commission (EC), and recently selection as prime-contractor of a six million Euro contract to define, in detail, a roadmap that will efficiently bring Galileo-based, value-added Location Based Services (LBS) applications to reality. For more information, see www.logicacmg.com/United_Kingdom/350232076.
More generally, LogicaCMG systems support the missions of a third of the world's operational satellites. The company has a long track record in the development of mission control systems for ESA and of successfully building on these for major commercial operators. For more information, see www.logica.com.
