First system compatibility test campaign.

Galileo is Europe’s civil global navigation satellite constellation and a major success of the European Union (EU). It provides the world’s most precise satellite navigation performance. Galileo services began in December 2016 and are currently supplied to more than 3 billion users. They offer several high-performance services worldwide, featuring various levels of accuracy, robustness, authentication and security.

Galileo is a key component of mass-market applications for such areas as transport, agriculture and timing but also for security-critical applications, such as health services, emergency and rescue services and law enforcement. Galileo services continue to expand with many new capabilities that are unique with respect to other GNSS. 

The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) continue to collaborate effectively on the many developments, deployments and evolution activities of the Galileo Programme, each according to their respective responsibilities for exploitation and system development, with the European Commission acting as the program manager. 

Stable Service Performance

Galileo services continue to deliver excellent performance every month in a safe, secured and seamless manner, managed by EUSPA. The performance parameters of the Galileo services are independently monitored by the Galileo Reference Centre (GRC) and are regularly published on the web portal of the GNSS Service Centre (GSC): gsc-europa.eu. 

The performance of the Open Service (OS) remains “Best in Class” among the GNSS providers. Timing users also continue to receive accurate (in the order of 5 ns) access to Galileo System Time, which they can trace to Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) through the corresponding offset parameters transmitted by the satellites.

The Search and Rescue (SAR) service was delivered well beyond the commitment to the users, for both forward and return link services, while the High Accuracy Service (HAS) and the Public Regulated Service (PRS) continue being provided as planned in the corresponding Service Definition Document (SDD).