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The European space industry includes a highly successful history of building and operating satellites, spanning nearly 50 years. In recent years, the process has evolved to make larger programmes with greater ambitions than was possible before. This trend has suffered some difficulties, so why are collaborations like Galileo and GMES proving difficult?

Looking underneath the covers of both programmes reveals that similar challenges have arisen mainly from complexity, demand for products and funding from the development programme, but for the first time, both ESA and the EC have setup satellite programmes made to compete around the
Trajectory Analysis and possess been looking to the private sector to co-fund them.

GMES and Galileo are the initial two European space programmes where commercial considerations happen to be taken into account from your outset. Both can be viewed as systems of systems which need the development of a business case, a feasible implementation plan using a thorough comprehension of the underlying complexity and an optimisation of the investment – finally translating technical excellence into real-world benefits to serve a growing market.

Both are designed for providing Europe with independent usage of information, and therefore are important assets for global co-operation and partnership – either as part of a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) or within the frame of your Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). Are both engines for European innovation and economic growth and need to be successful in order to guarantee the long-term success in European industrial, economic and social endeavour.

So, how could these programmes be approached in order to maximise their effectiveness? The Galileo and GMES programmes both produce “interim products”, built to be forwarded to specialist companies who add value to them to derive operational services for end-users. It’s these end-users – the real customers – that drive the complete supply chain. Without one, there is no part of launching the satellites to start with.

These specialist companies will typically have their very own product strategy and good familiarity with the commercial and competitive landscape around them. They have to establish value of being associated with such a programme and ought to be confident with the technical and commercial path in front of them. To achieve this they have generally planned their developments through road maps, which show the way the proposed new products and services squeeze into their own corporate plans also to meet the evolving demands of a wider market.

For typically small , specialised companies, to construct an investment case wants a good take a look at the market, confidence in sustainable demand and where time-to-market is relatively long, a resource of interim funding to support their activity. Having enjoyed a 30-year heritage inside the design and operation of space programmes, VEGA is really a company that has been closely associated with the specification and receiving the interim products, and work with Galileo and GMES has resulted in an ever-closer involvement with all the end-user suppliers – the so-called “downstream” market. Due to their involvement, the company believes that we now have three important steps that the institutional bodies should consider in order to make Galileo and GMES successful.

Firstly, there must be a sustainable demand pattern. The EC and national governments are very important users of end-products for your implementation of these policies. They are able to help to produce a framework when a sustainable market can emerge by federating their very own demand. If they’d like to consolidate their requirements, make them clear to industry, and give a clear symbol of the volumes required as well as the amount they’re prepared to pay, it will likely be much easier for industry to plot investment and capacity building.

Secondly, cash-flow during the early stages of the programme is important to long-term success. The institutions can offer interim funding in the form of R&D programmes, or maybe more directly as contracts for services as early as possible. This would follow the instance of the US who is placing a number of contracts for earth observation data.

Finally, since a space-based reaction to the end-users’ requirements may not be the only approach, a specialist communication and advertising campaign should be put in place in order to build awareness and acceptance through managed brand identities for Europe’s space programmes. This campaign would target both application developers and end-users.