The site of a ground station for Galileo, Europe’s global navigation satellite system, inside the Guiana Space Centre, near Kourou in French Guiana, was inaugurated on 19 November.
The site will play an essential role in the setting up of the Galileo system, since it will accommodate the most comprehensive of the Galileo ground segment stations. The Kourou station will consist of a telemetry, tracking and command station to monitor and control the Galileo constellation satellites, a sensor station for acquisition of the satellite navigation signals and two uplink stations for transmission of navigation and integrity messages to the satellites.
In all, the Galileo ground segment for the in-orbit validation phase will comprise 18 sensor stations, 5 uplink stations, 2 telemetry, tracking, command stations and 2 Galileo Control Centres. The Control Centres will be situated at Fucino in Italy and Oberpfaffenhofen in Germany.
The data gathered by the sensor stations will be continuously transmitted to the GCCs where they will be processed by mission control in order to determine the navigation and integrity messages to be sent back to the satellites via the uplink stations. The Galileo system’s capability to directly inform its users of the integrity level of its signal represents a major advance compared to other satellite navigation systems.
The Galileo ground station at Kourou will evolve as the system – which will consist of 30 satellites – is built up to full deployment, with the addition of 2 ULS antennas and 2 further redundant GSS channels, producing the final configuration. CNES will be responsible for site security and infrastructure maintenance during the operational phase.
The site was inaugurated in the presence of René Oosterlinck, Director of the Galileo programme, navigation-related activities at ESA and of Joël Barre, Director of CNES/CSG.
For more information please visit www.esa.int