• The “National GNSS Competence Centre” will be developed and managed by Telespazio as the prime contractor of a team that includes universities, research centres and Italian companies
• GNSS-based navigation services play an increasingly central role in everyday life and in numerous activities in the sectors of transportation, energy, finance, agriculture, defence and security

  Telespazio, a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%), has been awarded, as the first contractor of a team composed of Italian universities, research centres and industrial companies, the call by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for the creation of the “National GNSS Competence Centre”.

  

The Centre, 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.

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.

The “National GNSS Competence Centre” will allow scientific and technological skills to be shared, while providing third parties with management skills for complex projects in the field of satellite navigation. The Centre 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.

The distributed form of the Centre, in fact, aims over time to involve other academic realities, research centres and other industrial realities, with the aim of sharing skills and knowledge to develop new innovative technologies and promote their transfer to the market.

In the area of training, the Centre aims to become a national landmark for the dissemination of satellite navigation expertise, organising specific workshops and courses intended for both university students in STEM disciplines and professionals in the field.

Navigation services based on GNSS, and positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services in general, have long been the focus of major investment, and play an increasingly central role in our daily lives and in numerous economic activities in the areas of transportation, energy, finance, agriculture, defence and security. With the development of autonomous driving systems in the aeronautical (for both aircraft and drones), railway and automotive sectors, the transportation industry is keeping a close watch on technological developments in GNSS, as it requires increasingly precise, resilient and robust navigation systems.

Telespazio is a leader in the field of GNSS, both through its role in fundamental European programmes such as Galileo and EGNOS and through the development of GNSS applications for civil and government uses. Telespazio has set up one of the two control centres managing the constellation and mission of the Galileo programme at its Fucino Space Centre in Abruzzo. Both control centres are operated by Spaceopal, a joint venture of Telespazio and DLR/GfR, a subsidiary of the German space agency.