[SatNews] Galileo’s terrestrial nerve centre has formally entered service.

With the first Galileo satellites due to be launched next August, Fucino in central Italy will oversee the running of all the navigation services provided by Europe’s global satellite system. The Fucino Galileo Control Centre, 130 km east of Rome, was inaugurated by Antonio Tajani, Vice President of the European Commission for Industry and Entrepreneurship; Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA Director General; Gianni Letta , Undersecretary of State of Italy; Jan Woerner, DLR Executive chairman; Enrico Saggese, ASI Chairman; Pier Francesco Guarguaglini, Finmeccanica Chairman and CEO and Carlo Gualdaroni,Telespazio CEO.

Fucino is one of two Galileo Control Centres – alongside Oberpfaffenhofen near Munich in Germany – to monitor and control the Galileo satellites and ground stations and provide all the information products needed to support the Galileo navigation services. The twin control centres sit at the heart of Galileo’s far-flung network of satellites and ground stations distributed worldwide. They have split responsibilities although, with Galileo set to operate continuously, they are fully redundant, meaning that one can step in for the other in case of need. In the initial phase, while the Oberpfaffenhofen centre is in charge of controlling the satellites in space, Fucino holds responsibility for the overall navigation mission.

Fucino will process the collected data, generate, transmit and distribute the navigation products through uplink stations connected to the satellites to broadcast signals to users. The Fucino centre will also keep the clocks aboard the individual Galileo satellites synchronised with the time of the overall Galileo system.