Study likely to highlight failure of industrial partners to agree management structure
European transport commissioner Jacques Barrot has asked the European Union's German presidency to investigate delays to the Galileo satellite navigation system.
Galileo programme sources say such an investigation is likely to criticise the industrial partners for not agreeing management structures that would allow production and service contracts to be finalised with the Galileo authorities.
"We think these [contract agreement] delays have no reason," says Barrot's office. The presidency is to report to the transport council ministers' meeting on 21-22 March.
Galileo's assets will be owned by the GNSS Supervisory Authority (GSA), which is having to conclude an agreement with the Merged Consortium - the corporate group that would own the concession to operate the navigation service - because its predecessor, the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU), failed to reach a deal last year.
That failure was partly due to a decision to combine the two competing consortia into one, after political interference by EU member states.
The contract delay could soon become a deployment delay. The Galileo Industries consortium, which has had to change its name for legal reasons to European Satellite Navigation Industries, must receive an order for 26 spacecraft from the Merged Consortium within the next six months.
The team already has an order from the European Space Agency for the first four "in-orbit validation" satellites, to be launched by Soyuz from French Guiana in late 2008. But if the follow-on order from the Merged Consortium slips beyond the end of 2007, it will cause supply chain problems.
Reversing the situation will be difficult, admit senior sources within the Merged Consortium and European Satellite Navigation Industries.
Complicating the placing of a contract for the 26 satellites is the failure of ESA's GIOVE-B test satellite during vacuum-chamber testing last year, which has delayed its launch until the end of this year.
Source: Flight International
