Thales Alenia Spacesigned a 54.5 million euro ($79.6 million) contract with theEuropean Space Agency(ESA) to supply a new version of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay System (EGNOS), Thales announced April 21.
    The 28-month contract will see Thales incorporate improvements for EGNOS' enhanced operability and upgrade critical subsystems that had become obsolete and provide significant improvements in the extension of the system.
    The European Union budget is financing the EGNOS project alongside the Galileo position system with 3.4 billion euros ($4.57 billion) through 2013. It is estimated that 1.9 billion euros ($2.56 billion) will be necessary to complete the Galileo infrastructure from 2014 to 2020, bringing the total cost of Galileo to more than 5 billion euros ($6.73 billion). The operational costs of Galileo and EGNOS together are estimated to be 800 million euros ($1.07 billion) annually.