Project Galileo is preparing for liftoff. But will Britain be left out in the cold?
Sunday, 20 September 2009
There are fears France and Germany could win most of the £2bn contracts for new European satellites
Ground control to Brussels. Commencing countdown, engines on. Europe's patient space industry has been waiting for what seems like light years to learn who will scoop £2bn worth of contracts in what is one of the world's biggest space projects. But at last there is about to be liftoff.
In three months, the European Commission will unveil which companies will build, operate and maintain 26 new satellites that are set to leave Earth in 2012. But there are concerns that the booming British space industry will miss out as countries like Germany and France pump hundreds of millions of euros into building new launch centres.
Known as Project Galileo, UK firms like tech giants Logica and Inmarsat are gunning for big contracts while smaller firms such as Surrey Satellite Technology and Vega are part of European consortia. Galileo is the first European space project directly funded by the commission and managed by the European Space Agency. "For good or for bad, this is a new paradigm," said a senior space industry executive.
The commission says all participating firms must be European, but some British firms are concerned that lobbying from France and Germany in particular will see their firms triumph when contracts are announced in December. And they fear that continental Europe subsidises its space industry so lavishly it will bring down bid costs, which could work against UK firms, even though the UK is contributing more than £1bn to the project.
Galileo is Europe's answer to the Global Positioning Satellite system, which is owned and run by the US military. GPS came to the fore during the first Gulf war and has since allowed the roll-out of satnav in cars. When Galileo is operational, there will be 30 satellites in orbit at an altitude of 23,222km. They will take about 14 hours to orbit the earth.
Galileo's supporters say it will vastly increase the accuracy of satellite navigation systems. It will make it easier to introduce individual road charging based on a driver's mileage and enable insurance firms to apply similar technology to set premium rates based on road usage. Heavy industry will welcome the ability to track sensitive cargoes.
But high-level security is the main reason Galileo is going ahead. Its proponents argue that Europe needs its own communication satellite network because it cannot rely for ever on receiving GPS for free.
Stuart Martin, director of Logica's space business, which is hoping to win two contracts from the commission later this year, said: "Everybody who uses GPS is relying on the US defence departments and taxpayer. So far they have been very generous . They have allowed everybody to use it free of charge. But there's no guarantee that will last."
The project, however, has endured almost as troubled a life as its historic astronomer namesake. It was first mooted in 1998 and is now hugely behind schedule. The commission was forced two years ago to scrap its original plan for it to be run as a public-private partnership structure because business feared they would not make any money.
Rather than can the whole scheme, the commission raided other budgets and decided member countries would foot the entire multi-billion pound bill. "Not one pig flying in orbit, this is a herd of pigs with gold trotters, platinum tails and diamond eyes," railed Gwyneth Dunwoody, the late chair of the Commons transport committee.
But whatever its critics say, Galileo is coming, and for the UK space industry the announcement of Galileo contracts comes at a crucial time. The sector has shown huge growth in the last 10 years, now turning over £5.9bn and directly employing 19,000 people while supporting a further 68,000 jobs.
On research and development spend, the space industry, unsurprisingly, punches way above its weight at 5% of its value – some three times the UK average. A study by the forecasting consultancy Oxford Economics two months ago described the UK space industry as a "success story, growing in real terms by around 9% a year since 1999/00 – more than three times faster than the economy as a whole. And it has the potential," it continued, "to continue to grow as rapidly over the next decade."
Chris McLaughlin, vice president at mobile satellite company Inmarsat, which is bidding for the operations section of the contract, said: "The UK has seen space as 'tomorrow businesses' for too long. Our competitors in Europe, China, India, Brazil and of course, the USA, know it's a business for today. We need to step up the share of UK public investment. America has NASA, China a state-run programme and Europe has ESA, where participation is linked to how much countries pay in. Space business is nationally strategic and the UK currently has no policy."
The government appears to have got the message. Two months ago, science minister Lord Drayson announced a three-month consultation on whether the British National Space Centre should be a fully fledged agency like its European counterparts. Drayson and his boss, Lord Mandelson, are also backing the Space and Innovation Growth Team to map out a 20-year plan for the industry. Whether it will be too late to see the UK companies win major contracts in Europe's biggest space programme remains to be seen.