The European Space Agency announced June 9 that the two experimental satellites being developed for the Galileo System Test Bed-Version 2, which will make up the first phase of the in-orbit validation for the Galileo satellite navigation system, are now about six months from launch.

The main objectives of the first pair of Galileo satellites is to secure the Galileo frequency filings, validate new technologies for operational use, characterize the radiation environment that the operational satellites will occupy and enable experimentation with live Galileo signals.

For this phase, two satellites, GSTB-V2/A and GSTB-V2/B, are being built in parallel.