EGNOS

The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) provides European navigation services alongside the American GPS and the Russian-led GLONASS systems.

SES is supplying the first two commercial payloads for EGNOS following two completely separate tenders by the European Commission. These two tailor-made payloads operate in the L-band to help verify, improve and report on the reliability and accuracy of positioning signals in Europe. SES is also supplying ground infrastructure, including fully redundant ground network hosting and two redundant uplink chains.

In the future, it will also support the European GALILEO navigation system, and the hosting satellites provide the capability to extend the coverage of the service from Europe to Africa and other neighbouring countries of the EU.

The first EGNOS L-band payload hosted by SES is located on the SES-5 satellite, which was launched in the second half of 2012 to 5 degrees East. SES is currently working with the European Commission on the acceptance procedure of the payload. The second payload will be hosted on the ASTRA 5B satellite, which is scheduled for launch in 2013 and will be positioned at 31.5 degrees East.