Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) and National Remote Sensing Center of China (NRSCC) will sign seven contracts soon, said a GIU official Thursday.

The cooperation between China and European Union (EU) on satellite navigation is "crucially important" and expected to have a very successful future, said executive director Rainer Grohe in press release about the NRSCC officials' meeting.

"We have many other countries which expressed interests to participate in the Galileo program, but as far as I can see, none of these potential partners is ready to contribute as much as China does," he said.

According to Zhang Guocheng, acting director of NRSCC, the seven projects in the segments of space, ground and applications will be contracted to Chinese companies and organizations by the end of July.

Zhang also said the first test satellite for the program will be launched by the end of this year, and China will send experts to attend the launching ceremony.

EU and the European Space Agency launched the Galileo Program in March 2002 to develop a satellite-navigation system independent of the US military-monopolied global positioning system (GPS).

With an investment of roughly 3.5 billion euros, the program will launch 30 navigation satellites, which will provide remote sensing data with resolution of up to one meter. The EU estimated that by 2020, the Galileo Project will bring Europe tens of billions of euros in revenue and tens of thousands of job opportunities.

According to a cooperation agreement signed by the NRSCC and the Galileo Joint Undertaking last October, China pledged to invest in research and development on space technology, ground equipment and application systems for the Galileo Program.

As the first non-EU partner for the program, China agreed to invest 200 million euros, including 70 million euros in the first phase of the cooperation.

Source: Xinhua