Galileo is a global navigation satellite system that went live in 2016, created by the European Union through the European Space Agency (ESA) and operated by the European GNSS Agency (GSA). The 10 billion euros project is named after the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei. One of the aims of Galileo is to provide an independent high-precision positioning system so European nations do not have to rely on the US GPS, or the Russian GLONASS systems, which could be disabled or degraded by their operators at any time.