The Government will subscribe a further E31 million to the European Space Agency's development of the Galileo programme, Europe's future civil satellite navigation system, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alistair Darling confirmed today.
Mr Darling said:
"This investment is good news for British jobs, British technology and science.
"The Galileo project has real potential to develop groundbreaking technology leading to more accurate in-car navigation and new systems for the emergency services to locate missing or injured people.
"Already many British companies are leading its development. We want our businesses to continue to lead when it is up and running - with new opportunities opening for our transport and communications industries.
"British expertise is helping to build it, we want British companies and jobs to benefit from it. That is why we are backing it."
A Public Private Partnership (PPP), currently under negotiation, will take over responsibility for building and operating the Galileo system.
UK industry has already secured key roles in Galileo: Astrium UK and LogicaCMG are major partners in Galileo Industries, the consortium of European companies that will build the first four test satellites. In addition, Inmarsat, a member of the merged Consortium that is bidding to run the Galileo PPP will manage the Galileo Operations Company (OpCo) for the Consortium in London.
Surrey Satellites Technology Ltd has already led a consortium that built and launched GIOVE-A, a demonstrator satellite to test the robustness of the technology being used under this programme. Other companies who will benefit from the development of Galileo include BT, Thales ATM, COMDEV UK and the Vega Group.
The Government is supporting a bid backed by the Welsh Assembly Government for Cardiff to host the Galileo Supervisory Authority, which will own and regulate the PPP for the European Community.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
The development phase of Galileo is a joint European Union (EU) and European Space Agency (ESA) programme, the costs of which are shared equally between the organisations. The EU share comes from its Transport Trans European Networks budget while ESA obtains its funds from contributions from its Member States.
The current costs of the development programme are estimated by the EU and ESA to be E1.5 billion.
The EU will provide E200 million while ESA has asked individual Member States to provide the other E200 million. The UK's contribution of ESA's share is E31 million, equivalent to the additional contribution from France, Italy and Germany, the other major contributors.
