Galileo : système de positionnement EUROPEEN

EU admits no date for worldwide Galileo service and spiralling costs

The European Union’s Galileo satellite navigation system will not provide a worldwide service by 2014 despite today's European Commission announcement, there is no date for its full operation and the EC has abandoned the project’s original €3.4 billion ($4.87 billion) price tag.

Announcing the winners of €1.04 billion worth of Galileo contracts today at 12:17h central European time (11:17h GMT) EC transport commissioner Antonio Tajani declined to give a final price tag citing rocket launch costs as a major cost growth factor. He had announced a €397 million contract for Arianespace to launch ten spacecraft with five rockets.

No date was given either for when the full 32 spacecraft constellation would be in-orbit or when the minimum 24 spacecraft needed for worldwide operation would enter service.

Tajani did announce the first space segment contract for 14 spacecraft for €566 million, awarded to German company OHB System. But this plan means only 18 spacecraft will be ready by 2014 - EADS Astrium is already building four Galileo spacecraft.

The EC told Flight International that negotiations would begin this year for the next batch of spacecraft but no number of satellites could be given.

Neither could the EC say when those spacecraft would be launched. This means only a partial constellation can be ready in 2014 six years after it was to be fully operational.

Astrium, OHB’s competitor, now has the chance to win future contracts however at the Paris air show it warned of a 40% cost hike for Galileo if the space segement is not awarded to just one company

Could cost concerns with Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system give International Launch Services an entree into Europe’s government launch market?
That’s the bet ILS is making, the company’s president, Frank McKenna, told reporters at Satellite 2010 here last week. McKenna says the company is in “serious talks” over an unsolicited proposal to launch a second batch of 18 spacecraft to complete the 30-spacecraft constellation, and could make a bid this spring. He says the decision to consider such a bid, after walking away from discussions some time ago, was motivated by increased concerns within the European Commission that it might not be able to deploy a full operating capability (FOC) unless it finds a way to reduce costs.
At the end of January, the EC issued awards for an initial batch of 14 FOC satellites, along with associated launch and system services. Arianespace was awarded the €397-million ($540-million) launch contract with its Soyuz 2 rocket, which will begin operating from Kourou, French Guiana, later this year. An option would permit it to orbit four additional spacecraft using either Soyuz or the Ariane 5 ES. As things currently stand, the EC will have to request another €1 billion or so in new funding in its next multiyear budget, covering 2014-20, to complete the system. EC officials worry they might have trouble getting such a sum.
According to McKenna, ILS’s Proton M can launch six Galileo spacecraft, compared with two for Soyuz and three or four for the Ariane 5 ES. He asserts that the 18 spacecraft in the second batch, plus the 10 to be launched by Soyuz, can be orbited within the €700-million cost envelope for Galileo FOC launch services established in 2008 after the program was reorganized.
However, a satellite industry executive says ILS would have to overcome both strong lobbying by Arianespace’s chief backers, France and Germany, and an EU requirement that Galileo satellites be launched from European soil. The task would be complicated by a recent decision by Gazprom to cancel a deal to launch two Yamal 400 telecom spacecraft on an Ariane 5 in what would have been Arianespace’s first Russian contract. The satellites will now be sent aloft by ILS. McKenna insists the switch to Proton was made purely for business reasons.
Meanwhile, chances are increasing that ILS and Arianespace will have to contend with a reborn Sea Launch, just as the launch industry is bracing for a downturn in its bread-and-butter fixed satellite service business (AW&ST March 15, p. 37). Sea Launch President/General Manager Kjell Karlsen said here that the company expects to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection by June.
Sea Launch recently received the balance of a second, $12- million debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing package, which Karlsen says is enough to carry the scaled-down company through June. Together with an initial package obtained last year, the company has received $25 million in DIP financing in all. Karlsen says a reorganization plan will be filed in the next few weeks. By June, he expects to finish all other recovery tasks necessary to resume flights: completing due diligence; finding a new investor to replace Boeing and Aker Solutions; transferring licenses from Boeing to the new owner; and making Energia the Sea Launch prime contractor, with responsibility for all suppliers. Karlsen says he has initialized—but not yet signed—a term sheet with a new investor. Candidates include Space Launch Services, which participated in the DIP financing, and an unnamed company.
Karlsen asserts that the current imbroglio involving Boeing, Aker and their unsecured creditors will have no impact on Sea Launch’s emergence from bankrutpcy. In early March, the unsecured creditors’ committee—which includes Intelsat, SkyTerra, Hughes Network Systems, SES Americom and Sirius XM Radio—objected to $750 million in claims filed by Boeing and Aker, setting the stage for a long chain of likely lawsuits and countersuits.
Strong support from satellite operators and manufacturers eager to keep access to a third launch provider—clearly evident here—is helping build acceptance for the reoganization plan, Karlsen adds.
Sea Launch expects to resume launch operations in early 2011 with Intelsat 17. The company also has four options with Intelsat and two yet-to-be-determined assignments for Eutelsat. Karlsen says the company will have enough backlog by year-end to fill its return-to-launch manifest: three Sea Launch missions are planned in 2011, and four—the minimum needed to break even—in 2012.

Europe's Galileo satellite-navigation system has reached a key milestone after the first two operational spacecraft passed performance-verification tests.

Satellite operator Telespazio and the German Space Agency DLR have received and validated the functionality of encrypted signals that will enable provision of Galileo public regulated services. The tests supplemented work carried out by the European Space Agency in Redu, Belgium.

The Galileo mission is managed by Spaceopal, a joint venture between Telespazio and DLR-GfR, which runs Galileo control centres at Telespazio's Fucino Space Centre in Abruzzo, and in Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich. Galileo is intended as an alternative to the Global Positioning System, in increasingly used satellite-assisted landings and as a source for area navigation.

The first two satellites were launched in October 2011 by a Soyuz vehicle from the European Space Agency's centre in Kourou, French Guiana, The in-orbit validation phase of the Galileo programme will be completed with the Soyuz launch of the next two satellites at the end of the summer.

A rapid launch plan aims to orbit 18 satellites by the end of 2014 for a functional service, and 26 satellites by the end of 2015 for near-global coverage. The full constellation of 27 spacecraft and three orbiting spares should be deployed by 2019.

From the second half of 2014, a requalified Ariane launcher, known as Ariane 5 ES Galileo, should be equipped with a four-satellite dispenser and be capable of delivering the spacecraft to orbital altitudes of 23,200km. The current ES launcher is used to launch ESA's Automated Transfer Vehicle to the International Space Station at about 380km.

Admin a écrit:Sinon

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2014/10/01/le-gel-d-une-tuyauterie-de-carburant-dans-soyouz-a-l-origine-de-l-echec-de-galileo_4498338_3234.html

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/galileo.html

A priori deux tuyaux d'hydrazine et d'helium (?) trop proches
Pb de désign
Pb de contrôle qualité ... à priori tous les fregat n'ont pas le même montage (ça doit dépendre du monteur et dans quel sens il prend le plan !)

J'avais un lien mieux et exhaustif hier soir mais je l'ai perdu

Admin a écrit:A priori la mission Galiléo est vraiment atypique en terme de profil

Laurent Simon a écrit:

Admin a écrit:A priori la mission Galiléo est vraiment atypique en terme de profil

C'est bien possible (ce qui expliquerait pourquoi le dysfonctionnement n'a pas été constaté avant),
mais cela n'a jamais été mentionné, sur aucun des articles que j'ai lus sur la question, ce qui m'étonne alors.