Galileo Sats Have Launch Options
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By Michael A. Taverna
PARIS AIR SHOW - Arianespace Chairman/CEO Jean-Yves Le Gall and Astrium Space Transportation head Alain Charmeau say political and risk considerations point to using both the Soyuz booster and the higher-cost Ariane 5 to launch Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system.
Launches of both vehicles would take place from Kourou, French Guiana, home of the Ariane 5 and the location of a newly built Soyuz pad.
Charmeau says the supplier baseline assumes 3-5 Ariane 5s, but both the European Space Agency's Galileo director, Rene Oosterlinck, and ESA Launch Director Antonio Fabrizi say the current customer baseline for the 28 Full Operating Capability Galileo satellites is for the fleet to be orbited by Soyuz, with Ariane 5 as backup.
Nevertheless, Fabrizi indicates that a 50 million euro project is under way to develop a dispenser and other improvements necessary to allow the Ariane 5 ES, whose in-orbit restart capability allows it to be used for Galileo's medium-earth orbit, to carry four Galileo spacecraft, vs. three with the current design. A contract to launch the four In-Orbit Validation (IOV) spacecraft on a Soyuz was inked at the Paris Air Show here last week.
Program managers are struggling to prevent Galileo, which was reorganized and put under the direct control of the European Commission (EC) in 2007 after falling four years behind schedule due to political meddling and other issues, from further slippage.
Stalling over procurement has already forced the EC to move the target in-service date from 2012 to 2013, and Oosterlinck acknowledges that even meeting that date is unlikely, though he insists that enough of the system will be in place by that time to provide "very good service" (Aerospace DAILY, June 22).
Other factors also could hold up Galileo and increase the cost of deploying the system:
" Completion of remaining IOV contracts. The EC has refused to pay for 376 million euros in extra work conducted before reorganization of the program until an audit of ESA's accounts is completed. Evert Dudok, head of Astrium's Satellite Division, says about 250 million euros of the amount has been released, but the timetable and conditions for releasing the rest are unclear. Right now, the first two IOVs are to be launched in the first half of 2010 and the second pair in early 2011.
" Integrating changes necessary to make Galileo compatible with China's Compass. Some industry sources say the high power levels of Compass will require the Galileo design to be modified. But this is contested by at least one agency expert, who argues that compatibility can be reached by other means.
Artist's concept of Galileo: ESA
