Thales Alenia Space, the joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), announced today that it has signed a new contract with the European Space Agency (ESA), on behalf of the European Commission, to upgrade Europe’s EGNOS satellite navigation system. Via this contract Thales Alenia Space will develop a new version of EGNOS (version V242B), incorporating new advanced functionalities.
Worth a total of about 78 million euros, this contract includes the following:
- expansion of the EGNOS SBAS coverage zone;
- installation of a new generation of reference stations (RIMS);
- improved algorithms in the computation center (CPF) to boost system performance;
- enhanced system security.
Certification and commissioning of this latest version is slated for 2023.