A Chinese general contractor for the European Galileo Project obtained Thursday three application projects for developing the world's most advanced satellite-navigating positioning technologies.

The Galileo Joint Undertaking (GJU) endorsed China Galileo Industries (CGI) to develop the fishery application system, the location-based services and special ionospheric studies for the Galileo regional augmentation services.

The European Union (EU) and the European Space Agency kicked off the 3.5 billion-euro Galileo Project in March 2002 to develop a satellite-navigation system independent of the U.S. military global positioning system (GPS) monopoly.

The project will launch 30 navigation satellites, which will provide remote sensing data with resolution up to one meter. At present, the data resolution in the GPS civilian domain is only ten meters.

Ma Songde, vice minister of science and technology who is responsible for hi-tech research and development, said at the signing ceremony, "We have reached a concrete step forward and we will in the very near future sign more comprehensive and higher-level agreements for cooperation."

The scheduled cooperation will include projects concerning space and ground infrastructure construction. The first Galileo navigation satellite is expected to be launched later this year.

Rainer Grohe, the GJU executive director, said, "This cooperation will create mutual benefit for both of us."

Zhang Guocheng, executive director of the National Remote Sensing Center of China, said, "The fishery application system will greatly benefit China's fishery industry."

China was the first country outside Europe to join the Galileo Project, agreeing to invest a total of 200 million euros into the global consortium. About 70 million euros of the Chinese investment have been put into technologies development and the remaining 130 million euros into deployment of space and ground infrastructure.

Meng Bo, CGI chair of the board, said, "GPS is mainly for military use as well as for a little bit of civilian use, while the Galileo systems will be responsible for customers so as not to shut off signals without our customer's consent."

The EU estimated that by 2020, the Galileo Project will bring Europe tens of billions of euros in revenues and tens of thousands of job opportunities. Chinese experts expected revenues worth 260 billion yuan (23.6 billion euros) in Galileo systems applications by 2020.

Source: Xinhua