By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News, Paris

The announcement will be made at the Paris Air Show on Wednesday.

It will come from European Commission Vice President Antonio Tajani, who has overall responsibility in Brussels for the flagship EU space project.

He is using the event at Le Bourget aerodrome to sign the last two industrial contracts needed to make Europe’s satellite-navigation venture a reality.

The combined valued of these two agreements is 355m euros. They are both concerned with ground operations.

One (281m euros) is with Thales Alenia Space of France, who will be tasked with looking after Galileo’s timing and navigation data, ensuring it is properly formatted for transmission by the satellites.

More:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13871198