22 May 2008

What are the European Technology Platforms (ETPs) and how Galileo can benefit from them?

European Commission launched the European Technology Platforms (http://cordis.europa.eu/technology-platforms/home_en.html) that have the main objective to provide a framework for stakeholders, led by industry, to define research and development priorities, timeframes and action plans on a number of strategically important issues where achieving Europe's future growth and competitiveness. ETPs have the potential to contribute significantly to the renewed Lisbon Strategy (see http://ec.europa.eu/growthandjobs/index_en.htm ) and to the development of a European Research Areas of knowledge for growth including satellite navigation.

Among the other it has been in fact created an ETP called ESTP (European Space Technology Platform), see http://www.estp-space.eu/. It is managed by European Space Agency and it is declared that it aims to create a non-dependent technology portfolio facilitating European strategic independence for the access to and exploration in space, and to support the development of next-generation technologies best serving Europe’s ambitions in space-related sectors like Galileo and GMES.

Reading the available documents on the web site, it is not clear which benefits the ESTP generated on Galileo. Among the list of stakeholders, is there someone having an experience of cooperation in this ETP?

15 May 2008

Expanding the Navigation Lab

Today we started moving some of the NavSAS people to a new room that has been added to the Navigation Lab.
Finally we will have a less crowded environment for working and a better organization of all the test equipment, that in the last months grew a lot.
The old room of the lab will be hopefully less messy of cables, connectors, boards and receivers, at least for some weeks !

The new room is very nice and it is painted with the NavSAS colours. However, once all the people who are now hosted in other labs will have moved there, it will be fully occupied already... We need start working for finding a third room in the next months...... :-)