The European GNSS Agency (GSA) has announced the establishment of the Galileo Reference Centre (GRC). The announcement was made during the 4th European Space Solutions conference held in The Hague, when a hosting agreement to establish the GRC in the Dutch town of Noordwijk was officially signed. The Centre’s core mission is to perform independent monitoring of Galileo’s performance and report on its findings.

With Galileo Initial Services set to be declared this year, the GRC will play a pivotal role in the programme’s operations, providing the GSA with an independent system to evaluate the performance of the Galileo Service Operator and the quality of the signals in space. The GRC is fully independent of the system and the Galileo Service Operator with respect to both the technical solution and operations

GRC’s core facility in Noordwijk will also actively integrate contributions from the EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland. The core facility is charged with generating performance evaluation products, reporting and performing dedicated campaign-based analyses. It will also rely on a range of facilities and expertise available in the Member States.

The GRC will be implemented using a versioning approach. The first step is expected to be in place at the time of declaration of Galileo Initial Services. The core facility is set to become operational in 2017.