Space: 10th Anniversary of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service

Today, we are celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Safety of Life (SoL) Service. The service was declared operational by the Commission in March 2011. In nearly 400 airports across Europe, the EGNOS SoL Service is supporting civil aviation precision approaches thanks to improved navigation based on GPS. It makes the aviation sector safer and more efficient for the European operators, while significantly contributing to the reduction of the aviation environmental footprint. The SoL Service is also intended to support applications in a wide range of other domains such as maritime, rail and road. Commissioner Thierry Breton, in charge of Internal Market, said: “Implementing innovation is at the heart of the European Union space programme, allowing many different sectors to take advantage of the space-based services to develop their activities, having at heart the well-being of citizens. The EGNOS SoL is a successful example of this approach.” EGNOS is Europe’s regional satellite-based augmentation system. It has been Europe’s first venture in the world of satellite navigation and is used to improve the performances of global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), such as GPS and Galileo in the future. EGNOS improves the accuracy and reliability of GNSS positioning information, while also providing a crucial integrity message to confirm the usability of the GNSS signal. EGNOS is currently managed by the European GNSS Agency (GSA) under the leadership of the Commission. More info on EGNOS can be found here.