The French Court of Auditors has found that the European Space Agency’s Galileo satellite navigation program is 13 years late and three times over-budget. The Galileo and European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) program is the first Pan-European satellite navigation system, providing a highly accurate global positioning service under civilian control.
Galileo’s aim is to provide a high-precision positioning system upon which European nations can rely independently. Galileo is intended to provide horizontal and vertical position measurements within 1-metre precision, and better positioning services at high latitudes than other positioning systems.
However, after a series of cost overruns and strategy failure, only 12 satellites have been launched of the total planned 30 satellites, which is now expected for completion around 2020.
December 2016 launch of Galileo GNSS satellite by Soyuz rocket.
While the original budget for the project was US$5 billion, the French Court of Auditors has reported that its costs have inflated to US$14.2 billion. And despite the whole project being originally due for completion by 2008, the program is already 13 years late with a completion data now estimated at between 2010-2021.
The Court of Auditors report condemned the lack of space industrial strategy at European level and that up to seven percent of European Union GDP is dependent on satellite technology.
More details at Sputnik News.
