European Satellite Navigation Industries

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European Satellite Navigation Industries, formerly called Galileo Industries until legal action prompted a name change, is a joint venture of the companies Alcatel Alenia Space and Thales (France), Finmeccanica (Italy), EADS Astrium (UK and Germany) and Galileo Sistemas y Servicios (a consortium of seven Spanish companies).

The company is the primary construction company for the Galileo positioning system, tasked with developing and building the satellites and components for the ground segment infrastructure of this satellite navigation system. The partner firms have committed to not construct competing products for Galileo. However, some competition has come from Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, which has successfully built and launched the first GIOVE-A testbed satellite, and which has been given a contract for a followon GIOVE-A2 satellite while the joint venture's GIOVE-B satellite remains on the ground awaiting launch.^[1]

The company is headquartered at Ottobrunn near Munich, with an office in Rome. The company employs around two hundred people, many working directly for their parent corporations.

1 Update
2 Further reading
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Update

This private sector group of eight companies abandoned Galileo in 2007. Subsequently, EU has taken over the construction of Galileo positioning system, awaiting a formal agreement to be reached before the end of 2007.^[2]

On the 21st December 2007 ESA terminated the Galileo contract with the European Satellite Navigation Industries.^{[citation needed]}