After leaving the EU, the position of Britain in key European space projects remains uncertain. Therefore, the country is going to take up the development and launch of its own satellite navigation system.
Prime Minister Theresa May has created a team of engineers and specialists in the field of the aerospace industry, led by the British Space Agency, to create variants of the British global navigation satellite system. The team will develop both civilian and encrypted signals to provide any British system with similar commercial and secure capabilities, such as the dominant GPS system in the United States.
The EU reported that British companies may disconnect from participation in bidding for contracts Galileo - a satellite system worth 9 billion pounds sterling, designed to compete with the American GPS. Britain played an important role in the development of a system that should fully function in 2026. The EU representatives decided in the beginning of 2018 to transfer one of the Galileo satellite monitoring bases from the UK to Spain in order to maintain security after the country's withdrawal from the union. Britain will be able to use Galileo's open signal, but the armed forces and electronic assistance services have been denied access to an encrypted system.
The British system should start in the mid 2020s. She plans to use overseas territories to secure the global network. In the British territories, the equipment necessary for the functioning of Galileo in the EU is still located.
The analysis shows that the refusal of the navigation satellite system can cost the British economy 1 billion pounds per day. And let's not forget that protection, national infrastructure and emergency response depend on technology.
Britain is the world leader in the development of satellite technology, because it accounts for 40% of small satellites in the world and 1 of 4 telecommunications.
