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The coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on organisations, businesses, individuals and their families. As one of the few European Agencies delivering services 24/7, and with centres spread across Europe, the European GNSS Agency (GSA) has put various measures into place to ensure continuity of services and the security of EGNSS infrastructure, while at the same time prioritising the health and safety of staff and contractors.

The GNSS world marks Beacon Awareness Day (406 Day) on 6 April. But this celebration also has a more serious purpose - serving as a reminder to the owners of Search and Rescue 406MHz beacons to test them, check their batteries and update their Cospas-Sarsat or National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) registration.

The 2020 edition of the Galileo Masters opened for submissions on April 1st, seeking to award applications, services and new ideas that use Galileo and EGNOS also in synergy with other space programmes to respond to pressing needs facing business and society.
The 2020 competition has three GSA challenges under the theme Space for Future Generations

In the two years since the launch of the EU’s eCall emergency response system, which automatically calls emergency services in the event of a road accident, manufacturers have been quick to implement the life-saving technology, with around 3 million eCall-enabled vehicles already sold in Europe.

Location is a key requirement when attempting to monitor and map the spread of a disease and GNSS is one of the main tools supporting this. Galileo, currently embedded in over 1.3 billion smartphones and devices worldwide, is helping to increase GNSS accuracy and availability, especially in urban areas. Since the outbreak of the coronavirus earlier this year, many apps have been developed that use GNSS location to monitor the global spread of the virus and to map outbreaks of the COVID-19 disease. GNSS-apps are also proving their usefulness by helping people to implement social distancing in queues and other public spaces.

Hackers came together online at the Raw Galileo 24-hour hackathon over the weekend to develop innovative solutions that leverage Galileo raw measurements for use on Android-based mobile devices. Organized by the University of Nottingham and the European GNSS Agency (GSA) as a part of the FLAMINGO project, the hackathon challenged the participants to develop solutions addressing two key challenges, enticing them with a prize pot of EUR 6000.

The European GNSS Agency (GSA) joins the 2020 Global Surveyors Day, to celebrate the men and women of the surveying profession and their valuable work across a wide range of geomatics applications including land surveying (cadastral, construction, mapping and GIS, mining and infrastructure monitoring) and offshore surveying. The surveying industry and community have been an early adopter of Galileo and EGNOS leveraging on the high-precision positioning to develop new services and applications.

Point.IoT, an exciting new programme designed to empower innovation using Galileo and IoT technologies, is offering 10 teams of ambitious entrepreneurs the chance to tackle relevant industry challenges while showcasing the use of European positioning technologies in IoT. The winning team stands to win a cash prize of EUR 20,000. Interested? Apply now!

Registration for the 5th Farming by Satellite Prize, which aims to promote the use of EGNSS and Earth observation in European and African agriculture, will open on 16 March. If you are a young innovator with an idea for using satellite technologies to enable sustainable farming practices, improve efficiency in agriculture and reduce its environmental impact, this is your chance to win some great prizes!

The first performance evaluation of the Galileo Return Link Service (RLS) following its launch has revealed excellent service provision that exceeds set targets. The Galileo RLS, which allows people in distress to receive automatic acknowledgement that their signal has been received, was declared operational at the 12th European Space Conference on January 21.