Satellite navigation for the masses!

ESA announced this week that they had formed a new Galileo Directorate to be headed up initially by Rene Oosterlinck, but from 2011 by Didier Faivre. In ESA’s words:

“The Galileo Directorate is devoted to the implementation of the Galileo Programme for the European Commission and to other related satellite navigation activities. The Directorate is set up to cope with the wide changes that have taken place in this programme concerning the deployment of the Galileo system and its complete infrastructure, and the system level responsibility and industrial prime role that ESA will take on under an Agreement with the European Commission.”

Whilst this could just be construed as a reshuffle to prioritise what is one of ESA’s major projects it could also be the inevitable result of the reallocation of responsibilities between ESA and the GSA.

Earlier this year the European Parliment attacked the GSA stating that in the absence of a PPP for Galileo it was no longer needed. It is likely that this prompted a rethink of the role of the GSA. The MEP’s were right for once, much of the GSA’s activity related to technical developments were at best overlapping with the work of ESA.

It could be imagined that the EC would wish the GSA to remain but perhaps focused on their marketing role and some other European level matters best kept in Brussels such as arrangements surrounding the military PRS service and the approval of Galileo for safety critical applications. The question now is will the technical department be dissolved?