Galileo and EGNOS

GALILEO is the European satellite radio navigation and positioning programme. Launched by the European Commission and developed jointly with the European Space Agency, it gives the European Union (EU) an independent technology to compete with and complement the American GPS and Russian GLONASS systems.

Unlike GPS and GLONASS, Galileo is civilian run, neutral and designed for Europe with better coverage at high latitudes. While providing autonomous navigation and positioning services, Galileo will at the same time be interoperable with GPS and GLONASS, thus forming part of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The fully deployed Galileo system will consist of 30 satellites and the associated ground infrastructure.

At the end of 2006, the Galileo joint undertaking was dissilved and its activitiestransferred to the European GNSS supervisory authority.

EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) is a satellite-based augmentation system that improves the accuracy of satellite navigation signals over Europe. The system consists of transponders aboard three geostationary satellites over the eastern Atlantic Ocean and Europe, linked to a network of about 40 ground stations and four control centres. It supplements the Galileo system, as well as GPS and GLONASS, by reporting on the reliability and accuracy of the signals.

For further information, please visit the European Commission website