The Ariane 5 rocket carrier, including four satellites for the Galileo European navigation system, launched from the Kourou space port in French Guyana on Wednesday (July 25) morning. One of the satellites bears the name Samuel as an honour to Samuel Patrik from Partizánske (Trenčín region), the winner of a school painting competition centred on the theme "Space and Astronautics".
In 2012, then ten-year-old Samuel won the competition that was held in other EU countries, too. With his painting called "My Satellite Galileo" he succeeded from 764 pictures painted by children from all over Slovakia. By the time his name got into space, Samuel was already 16. On this occasion, European Commission Vice-president for Energy Union Maroš Šefčovič, who is in charge of coordinating the EU's space policy, told TASR that he met Samuel during the presentation of the Galileo exhibition in Bratislava. "I'm glad that one of the satellites bears the name of a young Slovak man. It reminds us that the Galileo project is here for all Europeans," stated Šefčovič. The EU commissioner said that with these four additional satellites sent into orbit, the most up-to-date space network has been built, which will provide the most accurate localisation services in the world.
"It's an important milestone in building the EU's independence and we want to continue in that. We've managed to get into space new generation satellites that will facilitate several-times higher accuracy in localisation services than we were used to, for example, with the US GPS system," said Šefčovič, adding that GPS has a localisation accuracy of ten metres, while Galileo reduces it to 20 centimetres. He also stressed that this is a brand new quality of service, and not only motorists but also people with impaired vision will be able to use it thanks to various mobile applications.
The EU commissioner pointed out that technologies connected with space programmes contribute almost 7 percent to the EU's GDP. "I've seen calculations with one euro invested in the space infrastructure bringing back €7-10 in various services. It's advanced technology that the EU must be interested in," he said, adding that the EU must build its geostrategic independence and invest in technologies of the future. "The European economy must be interested in being very strong in this technology," he said.
According to Šefčovič, the EU would like to have 30 Galileo satellites in orbit by 2020 or 2021. However, its current 26 satellites already enables the provision of interesting services to the public. The EU executive is pressing on still a higher number of common users to be able to test new services offered by the Galileo network. At the moment 95 percent of smartphones have a chip that receives a signal from Galileo. The EU has allocated a record-high sum of €16 billion for space programmes within the next seven-year budget (2021-2027).
