China will soon join the Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU), said Dr. Jurgen Sanders, First Counsellor in science and technology of the Delegation of the European Commission of the European Union (EU) to China at an interview with China News Service.

According to Mr. Sanders, GJU, established in 2003, is a governmental institution in charge of the Galileo Program on behalf of European Commission and the European Space Agency (ESA). China will become the third member besides European parties thus it will be not only participating in Galileo but owning the Galileo system.

Mr. Sanders said that in the total 3.4-billion-euro investment for Galileo, 3.2 billion will come from Europe. China, with its 0.2-billion share, will participate throughout the program in the research and development of the satellites, technological development, ground facilities and services for users.

Sino-European cooperation is going on well in both technology and politics. It shows that Europe and China, including their enterprises, can join hands, commented Mr. Sanders, who is satisfied with the cooperation so far.

As learned, in terms of technology, most of the R&D work has been completed or almost completed. Two test satellites, still under development, will be launched in 2005 after the completion of the whole system. Deployment will start in 2006 and 2007: web-deployment for launching satellites, ground-station building, overall system coordination. Galileo Program will go operational in 2008.

Compared with the popular US Global Positioning System (GPS), Galileo system, totally civil, will have an edge for its high accuracy of navigation and positioning, special services in searching and rescue and relatively low price. It will provide both paid-for and free services. More importantly, it will break thee GPS's monopoly in global navigation and positioning and offer more choices to users. Mr. Sanders expressed the hope that Galileo system can serve the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

Talking about the potential of Sino-Europe cooperation, the EU official said, as China has owned manned space flight and is quite developed in space technologies such as the development, launch and measurement and control of satellite and carrier rocket, the European side hopes to have more extensive cooperation with China in the application of Galileo Program, new-generation communication satellite, global environment and security monitoring system.

Galileo Program, a satellite navigation and positioning system, is designed to encircle the globe with 30 medium-Earth-orbit satellites on three orbit surfaces of 65 degrees of inclination, each one of which is to be deployed with nine working satellites and one in orbit for backup. China and Europe signed on Galileo, the Civil Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), in Beijing at the end of 2003. It is the ever-biggest scientific and technological cooperation program between the two sides.

By People's Daily Online