It will be Brexit also in space. British Prime Minister Theresa May announced that London is doing everything possible to exit the Galileo programme, the one which involves all member countries and which guarantees a civil satellite navigation and positioning system (the European alternative to GPS, which is managed by the Department USA) to all of Europe, and has already ordered the release of a 130 million euro loan to start building a parallel and competing project to the one that the United Kingdom has so far shared with the other countries of the Old Continent. The bone of contention is that Brussels is not opposing London's permanence in Galileo, despite the imminent Brexit, but would in return demand that the British continue to contribute to the project and above all, for questions of security and sovereignty , would like to exclude them from building some particularly important components of the next generation of satellites.
This would have irritated May: "We would like to stay in the Galileo programme, but we have to prepare for any eventuality," the prime minister told The Telegraph. The point is also that the United Kingdom, since it was launched, has invested a good 1,4 billion euros in the project, which has seen the launch of 16 European satellites in all: already last May it had threatened to sabotage Galileo and ask for the refund of that amount. The Italian-French company Telespazio takes part in the project, the result of a joint venture between Leonardo (67%) and Thales (33%).
