Photo: GSC/GSA

Responsibility for in-depth troubleshooting and problem resolution of the GSC Ground Infrastructure has been transferred from a European GNSS Agency (GSA)-held European GNSS Service Centre (GSC) infrastructure contract to Spaceopal and its core team member DLR GfR, responsible in the Galileo Service Operator (GSOp) industrial organization also for L2/L3 maintenance activity. This contract extends for 10 years.

The transfer occurred after Spaceopal successfully passed the Maintenance Handover Review (MHOR) for the Level 2 and 3 Maintenance of the GSC in Torrejón de Ardoz, outside Madrid, Spain.

“Taking over this responsibility will allow us to react much quicker to anomalies in a more flexible way, directly improving operations and the service that the European GNSS Agency (GSA) provides to the Galileo end users,” said Christian Hessmann, Engineering Manager at Spaceopal.

The GSC services can be accessed by Galileo users via the GSC web portal.

Spaceopal is a joint venture between DLR Gesellschaft für Raumfahrtanwendungen (GfR) mbH, a full subsidiary of the German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), and the Italian firm Telespazio S.p.A. Both parties contribute their respective Galileo Control Centers in Oberpfaffenhofen and Fucino.

Since July 2017, Spaceopal GmbH has operated the Galileo satellite fleet under the GSOp contract and will thus ensure the provision of the Galileo services to the worldwide community.

The GSC provides the single interface between the Galileo system and the users of the Galileo Open Service (OS), and the Galileo Commercial Service (CS) for the provision of specific services beyond the Galileo Signal-In-Space (SIS) transmitted by the operational satellites. The GSC acts as an active means to engage in “in”- and “out” bound activities and is conceived as a centre of expertise, knowledge sharing, custom performance assessment, information dissemination and support to the provision of value-added services enabled by the Galileo OS and CS core services.

he GSC is located in a fully secured environment in Madrid, Spain, within the National Institute of Aerospace Technologies (INTA) facilities at Torrejón de Ardoz, overseen by the Spanish Ministry of Defence.