19/04/2017 (Agence Europe) – Carlo des Dorides, the Executive Director of the European GSA Agency has said that given market trends, there is going to be increasing demand for the European space programme services Galileo and EGNOS. He is anticipating that over the next few years, there will be 100% compatibility between the different apparatus used and a number of other constellations. According to a GSA press release on 18 April, the Executive Director pointed out during a speech to the 32rd Space Symposium that almost 65% of chipsets and modules currently on the market are compatible with other constellations and that there would be 100% compatibility with similar technology used “over the next few years”. This is a significant challenge. The Galileo programme seeks to compete with the US GPS system and launched its initial services last December. Since then (see EUROPE 11689), however, it has experienced a number of technical problems but these are, for the time being, not serious (see EUROPE 11706). (PH)