The Galileo Joint Undertaking, the company created to develop the Galileo satellite system, has awarded Indra the contract to develop stations for receiving and processing emergency signals for search and rescue services. The Spanish company will work in conjunction with an international consortium of seven European companies. It will also collaborate with CNES (French Space Agency) and INTA (Spanish Institute for Aerospace Technology).
The Galileo satellites will receive the alarm signal transmitted by an emergency beacon and transfer it to the reception/processing stations. These stations will process the signals and will generate precise and reliable information for the different national rescue centres and for the international control centre. Critically, the terrestrial stations will be compatible with the current GPS (American) and GLONASS (Russian) systems.