At an in camera meeting with members of the European Parliament's Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE), Pierre Delsaux, the Deputy Director General of the European Commission's Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG Grow), and the Executive Director of the European GNSS Agency (GSA), Carlo des Dorides, announced that an independent commission of inquiry should shed light on the causes of the Galileo failure (see EUROPE 12299/29).
The recruitment of independent experts is expected to continue until the end of the month. The schedule will be tight. The publication of the final results is expected in the autumn and will be presented to the members of the ITRE Committee at a non-public meeting, we are told.
According to the preliminary report, the cause of the failure was a software update of the two Galileo control centres in Italy and Germany, which disrupted the synchronisation between the two centres. The disruption would not have affected end-users, only service providers.
The failure was repaired after 5 days by the European GNSS Agency (GSA), which worked hard without incurring additional costs, which is a real performance, we are assured. The problem occurred on 12 July and was resolved on 17 July. The signal would be stable and strong again from Tuesday 23 July.
Pending the final results, several lessons have already been learned by the various actors, in particular with regard to the need to improve governance and interaction between control centres in order to reduce response time during an incident.
Governance between the European Space Agency, the European Commission and the GSA (and future agency for the space programme) was one of the major stumbling blocks during the negotiations on the 2021-2027 Space Programme Regulation between the Council of the EU and the European Parliament (see EUROPE 12204/4). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)