Brussels, 10/11/2005 (Agence Europe) - The in-orbit testing phase of Galileo, Europe's satellite navigation system, will begin in December, with the first demonstrator spacecraft flying from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on a Soyuz rocket on 28 December. The satellite, known as Giove-A (Galileo In Orbit Validation Element, 'Giove' is Italian for the planet Jupiter), is currently undergoing final preparations at the European Space Agency's technical centre, ESTEC, at Noordwijk in the Netherlands, where Dutch transport minister Karla Peijs officially named the spacecraft on 9 November. Giove-A is being built by a small UK firm from Guildford, Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, for an estimated £20 mil (EUR 28 mil). The 600 kg demonstrator will be the first European mission to fly to the high-radiation environment of medium Earth orbit (MEO) at an altitude of 24000 km, to claim frequencies allocated to Galileo under international agreements by generating and transmitting a timing and navigation signal by June 2006. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has told the EU that a signal of the correct structure must be received on Earth by mid-2006 or the frequencies reserved for the venture could be handed to another party. BBC News in the UK reports that if something should go wrong with Giove-A, the European Space Agency has a back-up demonstrator, Giove-B, built by the Galileo Industries consortium, which is expected to be launched in March or April next year in any event because it contains additional technologies not on the Surrey craft. The first four satellites to be use din Galileo proper have already been ordered and will fly in 2008-9. The remaining 26 will be sent up in batches to complete the network by the end of 2010. The name Giove was selected because it is Italian for Jupiter, the planet whose four major natural satellites Italian scientist Galileo Galilei discovered in 1610 and used to develop a rudimental form of navigation, realising that the formation of these moons, whose eclipses are frequent and visible, provided a clock whose face could be seen from every point of the Earth. (See EUROPE 9065.)