“The Norwegian satellite station TrollSat is a milestone in satellite surveillance of the environment”, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said. It offers better and quicker access to vital climate, environment and weather data. The data will be used in research and in other environment surveillance. He also laid the foundation stone for the Galileo station next to TrollSat. The station will be ready in 2009. The Galileo station in the Antarctic will be part of the European navigation system Galileo, which will be operational in 2013 and be based on space satellites. www.norwaypost.no

Berlin officials denied claims that the cost of the European Union’s controversial homegrown satellite navigation system, Galileo, were set to skyrocket. The German magazine Der Spiegel had said that instead of costing 3.4 billion euros (5 billion dollars) to build, as budgeted by Brussels, it was bound to cost at least 5 billion euros. Even 10 billion euros (nearly 15 billion dollars) was possible, the weekly said.

Spiegel added that a secret German government study concluded the overall cost would rise by 1.5 billion euros even under optimum conditions. Any delay or unforeseen technical difficulty would only add to the cost. A spokesman at the Transport Ministry in Berlin, which is overseeing the project, responded, “The government has no information about any billion-euro gaps.”

NovAtel Inc was recently awarded a contract valued at CDN $667,861 by the Canadian Space Agency to establish sites in Canada to monitor the Galileo GIOVE test satellites. The work includes a parallel cooperative effort to integrate the NovAtel Galileo Test Receiver (GTR), into the GIOVE-A Galileo Experimental Sensor Station, to upgrade the GTR capabilities and to field these GESS stations in Canada. www.earthtimes.org

The first satellite in Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation programme has achieved two years of highly successful in-orbit operation. GIOVE-A secured a crucial Galileo frequency filing with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and supported the development and validation of technology crucial to the future of Galileo.

The 660kg satellite was developed by SSTL for the European Space Agency to broadcast Galileo signals from space and claim the frequencies filed with the ITU for Europe. SSTL designed, built and tested the first Galileo satellite through a 30 month programme and within a 28 million Euro budget, and launched the satellite on schedule on 28th December 2005. www.gpsdaily.com