Top officials in both European and U.S. government agencies and militaries are increasingly considering hosted payloads for a wider range of applications as both regions take cost-cutting into account in their long-term project plans. The European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), for example, is following the same hosted payload-oriented approach as the U.S. Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), according to European Commission (EC) Vice President Antonio Tajani.
   EGNOS is Europe’s first venture into the field of satellite navigation and paves the way for the continent’s Galileo satellite navigation system. EGNOS also augments the U.S. Global Positioning System (GPS) in order to improve the navigation performance in terms of accuracy and integrity with the required levels of availability and continuity of service over Europe. EGNOS currently offers two free-of-charge services: the Open service, which launched in October 2009, and the Safety-of-Life service that went into operation in March 2011.
   Tajani said that EGNOS, which is a satellite-based augmentation system, is only using the service of a GEO transponder to broadcast the SBAS signals.
   "This fits perfectly with the business processes already in place in the satellite telecommunications industry where satellite operators lease capacity to TV broadcasters or other telecommunications services," he said. "Owning a satellite was not an option due to budgetary constraints. The concept works particularly well for the EC when the satellite guarantees European coverage, which is the case when the payload is hosted on TV broadcasting satellites that are generally designed specifically to cover a particular region of the Earth."
   The EC has been working closely with the commercial satellite sector during the last few years and Tajani said this has led to an improved mutual understanding of the available technology. During this time, the EC has been pursuing a strategy of ‘technological neutrality’ regarding the means for reaching the goals of Europe’s Digital Agenda. "We expect to use the hosted payload model in the future. In view of a third GEO transponder for EGNOS, the next decision to be taken will be in 2014," said Tajani.
   While hosted payload-type deals have been relatively few and far between in the United States, there is hope that there may be some more highly innovative projects coming to the surface. All eyes will be on the United States, and whether it decides to do more of these types of deals. Col. Michael Lakos, Chief of the Global Mission Support Division of the U.S. Air Force, was recently reassigned out of the milsatcom space. Before he left, Lakos shared the Air Force’s perspective on hosted payloads with Via Satellite, and predicted what could possibly happen in the near future regarding executing these types of deals.
   "I think a lot of it has to do with the current budget situation we have now, not just in the United States, but also with the Department of Defense," said Lakos. "We started the dialogue with the commercial vendors that have approached us and vice versa, and get things up into space a little bit faster and a little bit cheaper, and also support the way of disaggregation. We have several major space satellite programs that have been around for several years, but we are investigating through this Resilient Basis Study, which is focused mainly on satcom. We are looking at ways of doing things cheaper, with more resilience and to break up the way we have done business up to now."
   Lakos acknowledges the much more active hosted payload environment happening outside of the United States. "The European Space Agency (ESA) is launching more, and there are several other new entrants. We have to compete to meet our own national security objectives, so we have to be responsible in terms of what we do in space, and also be able to deter aggression against any of our assets," he said. "Anytime we can cooperate with an ally such as the Australians is useful. You have to remember, we already have partnerships through the AEHF program with Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. We have also recently signed into an agreement with five new partners with the WGS program, so we are continuing to go down that path of sharing space with other nations and also form partnerships that will not only provide capabilities to our own warfighters, but to the warfighters of our allies. So, hosted payloads, either on our own satellite systems or on a foreign partner’s system, would help us with our mission objectives and vice versa with their mission objectives."