EU’s satellite navigation system Galileo suffers service outage
Europe’s satellite-navigation system, Galileo, has suffered a major outage.
The network has been offline since Friday due to what has been described as a “technical incident related to its ground infrastructure”.
Galileo is still in a roll-out, or pilot phase, meaning it would not yet be expected to lead critical applications.
Galileo is the world’s fourth geo-location satellite system, after ones created by the U.S, Russia and China, and has been pitched by the EU as a more accurate alternative to GPS. The EU has poured some €10 billion into the system, which has operated on a trial basis since late 2016 and is set to be fully operational by the mid-2020s with 30 satellites in orbit.
The current problems with the nascent system were first reported on Thursday, but by Saturday evening, all 22 satellites in orbit were listed as offline. On Sunday, a public notice was posted and GNSS has so far given no timeline for fixing the issue.
The problem means all receivers, such as the latest smartphone models, will not be picking up any useable timing or positional information.
These devices will be relying instead on the data coming from the American Global Positioning System (GPS).
