Building new infrastructure to support space-based services such as satellite telecommunications and navigation requires substantial investment, often over many years or decades. This level of commitment often necessitates international partnership between governments. Furthermore, constructing a business case for this investment requires a complex understanding of both public sector benefit and downstream commercialisation in a wide range of user domains.

Helios supports its customers in the development of new space-based programmes and their downstream commercialisation. Our ‘upstream’ programme capabilities include system design, project management and costing, technical feasibility studies and funding/procurement strategy. Our ‘downstream’ commercialisation activities include market forecasting, business cases, user trials and application feasibility studies.

Of particular importance is satellite navigation where we have been supporting European and UK government since the beginning of the Galileo programme in 1999. We support a wide range of public and private sector clients in the downstream application of GPS and (in the future) Galileo and other satellite navigation services. These include applications in all transport modes as well as consumer Location Based Services (LBS) and public safety.

As well as our work for government clients such as the European Space Agency (ESA) and European Commission (EC), we also work directly for some of Europe’s largest space primes, helping them to refine their business plans and market forecasts.

For relevant case studies visit our project profiles pages.

"Since the start of the project, Helios has been the overall coordinator for the supplier side. This has meant dealing with all of the complex project management related issues associated with a large international consortium attempting a novel, complex, technical development. We are very happy with the performance of the team."

Frederic Domps, European Commission