A Galileo navigation satellite in orbit. Photo: ESA

Telespazio will play a key role in an ambitious new space project in Italy which will see the creation of Italy’s first national center for the development of satellite navigation skills and technologies. It has won a new contract from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to be the prime contractor on this project. The ‘National GNSS Competence Centre’ will be developed and managed by Telespazio. Telespazio announced the contract win on Sept. 3.

The center will be housed in the Telespazio headquarters in Rome, will aim to create a laboratory that will use resources distributed throughout the national territory, at the offices of the various team members, for the development of new capabilities, solutions and technologies to face current and future challenges in the field of satellite navigation.

Interestingly, the center will also develop new software for monitoring the performance of GNSS services, as well as testing new receivers. A specific collaborative cloud platform will provide the development software capabilities to be used by all the entities participating in the project and by future users of the laboratory.

A number of different players throughout the satellite industry in Italy will be involved in the project. The team includes the National Institute of Metrology Research (INRiM), the Italian Aerospace Research Centre (CIRA), Qascom and the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) with the Research Units of the University of Pisa, the Polytechnic of Turin, the University of Padua and the University of Roma Tre.