Brussels, 31/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 31 March, Elzbieta Bienkowska, the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Industry , Entrepreneurship and SMEs, said that she was delighted with the successful launch of the seventh and eighth satellites of the European Galileo navigation system satellites (see EUROPE 11285).
“Galileo is back on track!” said Bienkowska, in an allusion to the failure of the previous launch in September 2014 (see EUROPE 11173). The launches are therefore expected to proceed normally. According to Bienkowska, 30 Galileo satellites will be in orbit by 2020 and the first services will be available from 2016. She also said that this is the biggest infrastructure programme to have received 100% EU funding and stated that the total cost of the project would be €7 billion.
The launch was carried out with the assistance of the Soyuz launchpad, which was, however, the reason the September launch failed. Bienkowska said that Ariane 5 was still not ready and that they had had to either decide to use Soyuz or wait for Ariane 5. She stated that as they wanted to be ready for 2020 they had therefore decided to use Soyuz. The Ariane launcher is expected to be ready for the launch of the next two satellites planned for the beginning of 2016. With regard to the failure of the previous launch, she explained that an audit was currently being carried out.
Elsewhere, Bienkowska provided a reply to a question from Alain Cadec MEP (EPP, France), who asked about the level of progress in the Copernicus programme. She said that terrestrial surveillance and emergency management services were operational and that those relating to environmental monitoring and the marine environment would be “soon”. Nonetheless, on the question of security and climate change services, she remained rather vague. The first Copernicus satellite was launched in April 2014. The second and third are expected to follow during the course of this year. (Jean Comte)