Galileo heads for the stars

摘要

The ambitious project to produce a global positioning and navigational system to better that of the US military GPS had appeared to stall in 2004 and was being widely panned in parts of the European Union over its cost and its future returns. But 2005 was the year Galileo finally came together. The nitty-gritty of deciding which contractors to use has been sorted out and in a way that bodes well for many other European projects. Moreover, agreements have already been signed or initialled with China, India, Israel and Ukraine while discussions are underway with Russia, Morocco, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Malaysia and Australia. This summer negotiations of cooperation agreements with Norway, Argentina and South Korea started. Galileo is beginning to thunder ahead. Both the technology providers and the funding are lined up.