{"id":39284,"date":"2019-07-15T10:58:08","date_gmt":"2019-07-15T10:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=87834bb5a6a4344f691016b58a924098"},"modified":"2019-07-15T10:58:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-15T10:58:08","slug":"europes-galileo-satellite-system-crippled-by-days-long-outage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/europes-galileo-satellite-system-crippled-by-days-long-outage\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s Galileo satellite system crippled by days-long outage"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
15 Jul, 2019<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

The European Union’s satellite navigation infrastructure, used by businesses and government agencies across the continent, has been offline for more than 100 hours following a network-wide outage.<\/p>\n

The Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (GSA), which runs the \u00a38 billion Galileo programme, confirmed this weekend the satellite system has been struck with a “technical incident related to its ground infrastructure”.<\/p>\n

As a result, all\u00a024 satellites in orbit are non-operational.<\/p>\n

“Experts are working to restore the situation as soon as possible,” the GSA said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“An Anomaly Review Board has been immediately set up to analyse the exact root cause and to implement recovery actions.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nGalileo is used by government agencies, academics and tech companies for a wide range of applications, from smartphone navigation to search-and-rescue missions.<\/p>\n

The programme offers several services including a free Open Service for positioning, navigation and timing, and an encrypted Public Regulated Service (PRS) for government-authorised users like customs officers and the police.<\/p>\n

Its business application spans multiple sectors; used by fishing vessels, for example, to provide data to fishery authorities as well as by tractors with guidance for navigation. According to the GSA, 7.5 billion Galileo-friendly apps are expected by the end of 2019.<\/p>\n

However, the satellite system, developed so European organisations aren’t wholly entirely reliant on GPS, has been offline since 1 am UTC on Thursday 11 July.<\/p>\n

The GSA said at the time that users may experience “service degradation” on all Galileo satellites. A further update then issued two days later claimed users would be experiencing a total service outage until further notice. Neither update offered a concrete explanation for the mysterious outage, which has persisted at the time of writing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The root cause, however, may lie with a ground station based in Italy, known as the Precise Timing Facility (PTF), according to Inside GNSS<\/em><\/a>. This facility generates the Galileo System Time, which is beamed up to the satellites to enable user localisation. It is also often used as an accurate time reference.<\/p>\n

In June, GPS services were also hit by a similar outage which affected a host of Middle-Eastern countries. According to Isreali media, that outage was linked to state-sponsored attacks from Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The government and UK businesses have played an integral role in helping to develop Galileo<\/a> since its pilot launch in 2016. The continental service is expected to be fully operational by 2020, with 30 satellites in total.<\/p>\n

But the UK’s withdrawal from the EU has threatened to fully cut off access by British agencies and companies, should no deal be agreed.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0government has already set aside \u00a392 million to develop an independent satellite system<\/a>, although it’s unclear how long this would take to implement. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keumars Afifi-Sabet<\/p>\n

15 Jul, 2019 <\/p>\n

The European Union’s satellite navigation infrastructure, used by businesses and government agencies across the continent, has been offline for more than 100 hours following a network-wi…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":433,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/433"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39284"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39310,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39284\/revisions\/39310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}