MUNICH, Germany — Aerospace company vendor OHB Technology AG (Bremen, Germany) has aired its intention to bid for the assignment of all remaining 26 Galileo navigation satellites. In the meantime, the first operational Galileo satellite Giove-B has started to transmit signals.
In an interview with Wirtschaftswoche magazine, OHB chairman Marco Fuchs said the company will submit an offer to build all or a part of the satellites. After the entire project has been restructured completely, there is hope that it can be carried using economic criteria, he said. "Now we see a Europe-wide competition that underlies EU procurement law," he said.
The move could become complicated since OHB's British consortium partner SSTL (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd.) has been acquired recently by OHB's mighty competitor EADS Astrium. Nevertheless, Fuchs hopes to continue its cooperation with SSTL. "We hear from SSTL as well as from Astrium that SSTL will remain autonomous and can continue its cooperation with us," Fuchs said. "But we are not starry-eyed and we will watch the situation thoroughly."
Fuchs declined to say who else is part of the consortium. In the interview, he expressed his belief that the satellite program can keep its schedule to launch operation in 2013 — under the condition that the contract will be awarded during the current year. "In any case, it is going to be a sporty effort," he added.
Meanwhile, the second Galileo satellite Giove-B began transmission of navigation signals past Wednesday (May 7th). According to the European Space Agency (ESA), it transmits the GPS-Galileo common signal using a specific optimized waveform, MBOC (multiplexed binary offset carrier).
The signals are locked on-board to a highly stable passive hydrogen maser clock, providing high accuracy in challenging environments despite with multipath signal reception and interference.
After launch on April 27th, the satellite's navigation payload was activated on May 7th. Currently, the quality of the signals is being checked, ESA informed in a press release. Involeved in the process are Telespazio (Italy), the Galileo Processing Centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, the ESA ground station in Redu (Belgium) and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK.
