Orolia announced that its atomic clock solutions have been selected for the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Under contracts totaling 26 million euros, Orolia will deliver its stable, accurate timing solutions to 12 additional Galileo satellites.
Each satellite will carry two Rubidium atomic clocks and two passive Hydrogen Masers, said to be the most stable clock in the world. Under these contracts, Orolia will supply its Spectratime Rubidium Atomic Frequency Standard and its Passive Hydrogen Masers physics package for an additional 12 Galileo satellites. These new satellites will reinforce Orolia’s position in the number of active atomic clocks in space, including more than 100 in the Galileo system.
This latest initiative builds on Orolia’s long-standing role in providing precise timing technology for satellite programs. The company is a leader in resilient positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) solutions designed to improve the reliability, performance and safety of critical, remote or high-risk operations
“We’re honored to continue supporting the European Commission with precise timing for Galileo,” said Orolia CEO Jean-Yves Courtois. “These new contracts further emphasize Orolia’s position as the world’s leading provider of resilient positioning, timing and navigation (PNT) solutions.”
In addition to serving as Europe’s independent PNT source, Galileo can also serve as a secondary signal source for systems such as GPS, GLONASS or BeiDou in the event of service disruption. Galileo’s quadruple clock redundancy designed into each satellite ensures that even if a failure occurs, overall system performance will not be compromised.
More than 150 Orolia Spectratime atomic clocks are flying to support Galileo, IRNSS, BeiDou, GAIA and other missions, some for more than 10 years.
Orolia is a leading designer and manufacturer of a full range of high-performance, low cost GNSS synchronized crystal solutions, Rubidium and Maser sources, smart integrated GNSS reference clocks, rugged PNT devices, GNSS simulation and clock testing systems. Orolia’s PNT solutions support a variety of critical applications including defense, government, space, maritime, enterprise networks, aviation and telecommunications.