Contest Awards Winner's Names To Navigation Satellites

The Galileo Program is Europe's own venture into the field of satellite navigation. It is putting in place a global satellite navigation system similar to GPS. With the ever growing importance of satellite navigation applications for both businesses and citizens, Galileo will ensure the independence of Europe in this important domain, securing the availability of those applications.

But the individual satellites in the constellation needs names, or so the Europeans think. And so, the European Commission has rolled out a competition in the 25 Member States to give names to the satellites which will be launched until 2019. Children aged 9-11 can participate. From now through November 15th, children living in the EU and born in 2000, 2001 and 2002 - when the Galileo program started - are invited to make a drawing related to space and aeronautics, scan it or take a digital photograph of it and upload it onto the competition's website. In each country, a national jury will select the best drawing and the winning child will have his or her name given to one of the satellites of the Galileo constellation. Satellites launches will take place regularly as of 2012 until the full constellation (which should count 30 satellites) is complete. The order in which the names of the children will be given to the satellites is determined by the alphabetical order of the member states written in the national language(s). The child with the best drawing related to space or aeronautics in each Member State will have his or her name given to a satellite of the Galileo program.

The first two satellites to be launched on October 20th will bear the names of the winning children from Belgium (Thijs) and Bulgaria (Natalia) where the first competition took place earlier this year.

European Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani, responsible for enterprise and industry policies, said: "With satellite navigation, space exploration, and space observation, the topic of space is of ever increasing importance for citizens and for our economic future. We wish to incite the creativity of children, and for them to become enthusiastic about space and its opportunities from a young age. We reward this creativity with the unique opportunity - of offering 27 children the chance to give a satellite their name."

FMI: www.galileocontest.eu