Information:
For over 15 years, the European GNSS Agency, (GSA) has contributed to the management, service provision and security of of the EU flagship satellite systems Galileo and EGNOS. The GSA, which is to become the EU Space Programme Agency (EUSPA) in early 2021, will have an extended mission and additional responsibilities.
The renamed and expanded agency will continue to support the exploitation and market uptake of EU Space activities. As stated in the EU Space programme, it will also play a more significant role in ensuring the security of all programme components. The EUSPA will converge EU capacities to monitor the Earth’s near surroundings and support the market development of the Copernicus Earth Observation (EO) satellite system. As a key contributor of the EU Space programme with new missions under Copernicus, the agency will be an important partner for the Earth Observation industry and EARSC in the future.
As one of the GSA’s mission is to maximise adoption of European GNSS across user markets segments – and with almost two billion phones already using Galileo, it is certainly on the right track – it will be interesting to see how the agency will use its expertise and market intelligence acquired with Galileo to address new responsibilities under Copernicus and find synergies between the two EU flagship programmes. The EOcafe will focus especially on two segments in which both EO and GNSS technologies play a significant role: agriculture and smart cities.