Europe’s Galileo satellite project needs up to €1.7 billion in extra funding, but even that won’t be enough to get the system up and running on-schedule.
The European Commission has pushed back the launch date of Europe’s version of the US GPS set-up from 2014 to 2017, and predicts that even when it does launch, it will run at a loss of around €750 million per year in the long term.
A report viewed by Financial Times Deutschland reveals the EC expects development and maintenance costs of €1 billion per year for the next 20 years.
The first two birds are due to launch in 3Q11, but the final two won’t now be deployed until 2017 or 2018, the paper revealed.