Thales Alenia Space, the joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), today announced the signature of a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA), acting on behalf of the European Commission (EC) and the European GNSS Agency (GSA), for the development and deployment of the next version of the ground-based Galileo Mission Segment (GMS) and the Galileo Security Facility (GSF), together known as WP2X.

This contract, worth around €324m, will also include maintenance of the currently deployed operational versions. The main goal of this operational phase is to achieve the Full Operational Capability (FOC) for Galileo Open service by the end of 2020.

For the Public Regulated Service (PRS) – which many participating Member States are eager to use for their governmental applications – the aim is to reach Initial Operational Capability (IOC) within the same timeframe.

The main challenges are the modernisation of the infrastructure and the enhancement of security – including cyber security. These evolutions will be carried out in parallel with maintenance and operation of the already deployed versions (Galileo services were declared operational for initial service in December 2016). The current GMS/ GSF infrastructure includes more than ten million Lines of Code (LoC).

Thales Alenia Space will lead a consortium of 15 companies, with Thales remaining responsible for cyber security and encryption, while Leonardo will be responsible for the Galileo Security Facility.

During the 28-month duration of activities (up to the baseline at end 2020), Thales Alenia Space and its partners will perform the completion of the infrastructure deployment at a number of sites worldwide:

• Ground Control Centers (GCC) in Oberpfaffenhofen (D), and Fucino (It),
• Galileo Security Monitoring Centers (GSMC), in Paris (F) and in Madrid (SP),
• 5 ULS (UpLink Station) sites,
• 16 Ground Sensor Station (GSS) sites.