Indra leads from Barcelona the deployment of the new stations of the European GPS

BarcelonaEurope continues to look for ways to deepen its technological sovereignty, both on Earth and in space. And it does so, in a significant way, from Barcelona: this Tuesday, Indra signed two contracts with the European Space Agency (ESA) for the design and development of ground stations for the new generation of the Galileo project, the European global satellite navigation system, comparable to the American GPS, and to which 5 billion devices are already connected.

In total, as revealed in a meeting with journalists by the Director of Navigation Missions at Indra Espacio, Carlos Alvarez, the two contracts exceed 50 million euros. A first agreement, which Indra will lead from Barcelona together with the technology companies GMV and Thales SIX, is endowed with more than 29 million euros, and is aimed at the development of Galileo Sensor Stations (GSS); that is, the structures that receive the data emitted by the satellites.

The remaining more than 22 million will go towards the program's uplink stations (ULS), which transmit data to the satellites. In this case, the order will be managed from Madrid, also in collaboration with other companies in the sector. "From the point of view of the Spanish space industry, it is a very significant milestone," celebrated the director.

Growth in connectivity

The contracts signed today, as detailed by Álvarez, are for a "limited number" of stations. According to the company, the first phase includes three GSS stations and one ULS; although later on, once the European Space Agency validates their operation, the scope could be expanded. For the project leader, it would be expected to "end up with a similar number" of stations to those already operating for Galileo.

Currently, the European navigation system has 15 sensor stations (GSS) and four uplink stations (ULS), distributed in locations as diverse as the Caribbean, Antarctica, and Southeast Asia. The contracts signed this Tuesday only involve "the first phase of the project," and the company expects that "during the coming years, the ESA will request more work to be done," a fact that would "substantially" increase the budget.

Both contracts have an expected duration of four years. With this new project, Indra continues to strengthen its presence in Catalonia: as explained in May, it plans to create 1,500 jobs in the country and increase turnover by 2027. In Álvarez's opinion, the sensor station order represents "an opportunity to lead a project of this magnitude with the ESA from Catalonia, showing that work has been done on this subject for 30 years." The company expects to incorporate up to fifty workers into the city by the end of the next academic year, primarily dedicated to this initiative.

New technologies

As detailed by Álvarez, the new stations do not come to renovate the current locations –which had also been developed by Indra– but rather "are based on a completely different concept". In this sense, the new infrastructure serves the current Galileo satellites, but also to cover the needs of the future.

"When we build a station, the ESA asks us for it to be more secure, more resilient, more flexible, because in the future we will not know what the users will need", the project manager detailed. In this sense, the new projects are "more flexible, more expandable and easier to maintain". Once the second generation of Galileo is deployed, "the precision of the service will be much greater". Furthermore, Álvarez has highlighted the "sovereign" character of the initiative, in that the navigator reduces to a minimum the dependence on technologies from outside the EU, such as GPS.