Telespazio and DLR-GfR have signed an agreement to renew their partnership for management of operations in the Galileo programme in the years and next generations to come.
Ongoing and future work will be performed by Spaceopal, a joint venture owned equally by Telespazio and DLR-GfR which has been Galileo Service Operator since 2016.
The agreement reinforces the shareholders’ confidence in the Italian/German joint venture by renewing the company’s appointment to act as Galileo Service Operator (GSOp), in continuity on long term beyond 2026.
Spaceopal’s active involvement in the Galileo programme actually goes back much further. In 2010 ESA signed with Spaceopal the WP6 Contract for the Galileo FOC Operations Services Framework Contract, while EUSPA (former GSA) signed in 2016 the official Galileo Service Operator (GSOp) contract with Spaceopal.
Ever since then Spaceopal has taken end-to-end responsibilities for management of the Galileo satellite system and its performance. In particular it covers operation and control of the system, its security, service management, logistics and maintenance of systems and infrastructure, enabling services including related performance commitments at the global level and user support.
Spaceopal performs these tasks through the Galileo Control Centres (GCC) at Telespazio’s “Piero Fanti” space centre in Fucino, in the province of L’Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy, and in Oberpfaffenhofen, on the DLR’s premises in Bavaria, Germany as well as the Galileo Service Centre (GSC) in Madrid, Spain and a network of Remote Sites.
“The new agreement further consolidates the partnership for working together on satellite navigation technologies and applications which Telespazio has been working on with the German space agency DLR for over a decade”, comments Telespazio CEO Luigi Pasquali. “Spaceopal has proven its dependability, competitiveness and great capability for innovation, standing out as a virtuous example of partnership and teamwork not only among enterprises but between two of the Countries playing leading roles in the European space industry”.
“Galileo has become an indispensable building block to the European infrastructure. Its resilience is therefore essential for our future. I am thereby happy to see the effectiveness of this highly coordinated international team working together. As DLR-GfR and Spaceopal are also backed by DLR’s innovative spirit and research power I see the development of the Galileo-System in excellent hands”, amplified Anke Pagels-Kerp, Chairperson of Spaceopal and Divisional Board Member for Space of the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
“Especially in difficult times of the last few years with the pandemia and European political crisis we are proud that our DLR-GfR team in Oberpfaffenhofen as well as the colleagues in Fucino have shown the utmost commitment to the Galileo every day. We are showing that we are a reliable and dedicated partner – we serve Europe.” Stated Rolf Kozlowski, Managing Director of DLR-GfR.
“The confidence in us that our shareholders have expressed in this agreement makes us proud of the work we have done over the past thirteen years, encouraging us to keep working harder to ensure the efficiency of the system and develop more and more innovative services for the benefit of Galileo users all over the world” – note both Spaceopal managing directors CEO Marco Folino and COO André Bauerhin.
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