There was a global failure in the work of the European satellite navigation system “Galileo”. The system went down on Thursday, July 11, and has not yet resumed its work.
On the “Galileo” work status page, 24 out of 26 satellites are marked as “unusable”, and the remaining two are “undergoing testing,” that actually means that they are also not ready for use.On July 11, the European Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (The European GNSS Agency (GSA)) that responsible for Galileo warned companies and government organizations using the system of a severe deterioration in the satellite signal. According to the notification, the signal strength did not reach the required level, and organizations could continue to use the system at their own risk and responsibility.
On July 13, agency announced complete failure of Galileo. That is, all receivers, including in modern models of smartphones, have stopped receiving the necessary data on geolocation and time.
“Experts are working to restore the situation as soon as possible. An Anomaly Review Board has been immediately set up to analyze the exact root cause and to implement recovery actions”, — the GSA said.
Instead of “Galileo”, devices began to receive data from the American GPS system and the Chinese Beidou.
The causes of the incident have not been defined yet. According to the BBC, the problem developed due to the failure of the Precise Timing Facility (PTF) in Italy, which is a key element of Galileo.
Galileo is a multi-billion-euro project of the European Union and the European Space Agency. The EU owns the system, and Esa acts as the technical and procurement agent.
The Galileo satellite navigation system was launched in the European Union in 2016 as an alternative to the global positioning system (GPS) used by the US Army, and its Russian analogue GLONASS. Galileo offers free and paid services. It is widely used by government and commercial organizations.
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