Brussels – The mechanism to designate the exact time is entrusted to Italy. The National Institute of Metrology Research (Inrim) will in fact provide the metronome with which the European satellites Galileo, from space, will spread the signal of the exact time. This is thanks to an agreement signed with Thales Alenia Space France (Tasf) and Spaceopal, the Italian-German joint venture that will coordinate the Galileo satellites for the Global Navigation Satellite System (Gnss) in the next ten years. Through the Galileo Time Service Provider (Tsp) project, Inrim will have to develop by 2017 a computational system capable of constant comparison and synchronization between the atomic clocks onboard the Galileo satellites and the international time scale (known as Coordinated Universal Time, Utc), contributing up to 2026 to support Galileo’s time signal spreading service with precision at the level of nanoseconds. (9colonne)
