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Europe Relies on American GPS as Its Own Galileo System Suffers Massive Outage 101

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Europe's Galileo satellite network -- used by satnavs, financial institutions and more -- is in the throes of a huge outage. The system has been down since Friday meaning that travelers (and others) in Europe have instead had to fall back on the American Global Positioning System (GPS) -- or even Russia or Chinese systems. Galileo has been struck by what is being described as a "technical incident related to its ground infrastructure", and it's not clear when the situation will be remedied. The European GNSS Agency (Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency, or GSA) says that the incident affects only the Galileo initial navigation and timing services. It stresses that "the SAR service -- used for locating and helping people in distress situations for example at sea or mountains -- is unaffected and remains operational".
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Europe Relies on American GPS as Its Own Galileo System Suffers Massive Outage More

Europe Relies on American GPS as Its Own Galileo System Suffers Massive Outage

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  • Not in use (Score:5, Informative)

    by shortscruffydave ( 638529 ) on Monday July 15, 2019 @10:40AM (#58928280)

    used by satnavs, financial institutions and more

    Not strictly true - it's still in a proving phase, so not being used in anger by anything

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by qcope ( 116433 )

      The EU made a story of it going live, back at the end of 2016.
      https://www.gsa.europa.eu/newsroom/news/galileo-goes-live
      Clearly stating that the service was moving from testing to live service.... To say that its now in a proving phase... err is a bit of a cheek. What I will say... is that military or not, if something had cost 9 billion in the US... and was supposed to be capable of providing 24x7 service, after a few hours of offline... someone would have to stand up and say what had gone wrong and when it

      • more likely the British (who really made most of it) are being shut out by the Euro lot because of Brexit.

        A bit like hirting aload of competent programmers and then, once they're almost finished, laying them all off thinking the managemernt team can finish up and take all the profits.

        I remember one of the "reasons" to revoke Brexit was because the Brits wouldn't be allowed to use the Galilleo system afterwards. Oh well.

      • Is everyone on holiday in the EU?

        Is it Monday?

        I found it quite odd how many places were closed on Mondays when I visited Germany.

      • Is everyone on holiday in the EU?

        Yes, it's summer. Gotta take my 40 days vacation sometime and I sure as hell aren't doing it in the cold. Greetings from the Greek coast.

  • Is there any technical reason we can't have receivers that use all the different systems together to get more precise locations? For years phones have competed with better cameras on each generation, but we haven't seen any improvement on location.

    • Re:Combine all systems? (Score:4, Informative)

      by fred6666 ( 4718031 ) on Monday July 15, 2019 @10:49AM (#58928318)

      that's what phones currently do. I can see my phone uses mostly GPS, but also GALILEO and GLONASS

      https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]

      • How can you see Gallileo? (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It's not even open for public use yet, nor completed, AFAIK. Nor are there any phones supporting it, from what I've seen. Which makes sense.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )

          It's not even open for public use yet, nor completed, AFAIK. Nor are there any phones supporting it, from what I've seen. Which makes sense.

          https://www.gsa.europa.eu/news... [europa.eu]

        • It's not even open for public use yet, nor completed, AFAIK. Nor are there any phones supporting it, from what I've seen. Which makes sense.

          You haven't seen much. Both my 2 generations behind Galaxy S8 and my wife's silly Apple thing support Galileo. Get the right app and it will even tell you which satellite constellation is currently providing you the best fix.

        • It is definitely open to the public. Most phones in the US are configured to block access to it, since the FCC has stated that you can only use navigation systems that they have approved. Galileo was only recently approved for use in the US, but it wasn't retroactively enabled on many Android devices. If you take the phone to another countries, you'll see Galileo satellites show up.

          My Pixel 3 was released after the FCC approved Galileo, and Galileo satellites indeed show up while in the US (BeiDou does not

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • from what I understand Russia forces phones sold in Russia to support GLONASS. Since it's not very expensive to add to GPS chips, most manufacturers do it, instead of losing the Russian market. My Samsung phones supports it at least.

      • Already combined (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Monday July 15, 2019 @11:13AM (#58928432)

        Technically? No. I bet the issue is financial. GPS is good enough for most people. It gets you where you are. So why develop a new system for the phone. That would introduce extra code and thus extra cost for basically not much extra usability.

        Lots of devices already use multiple systems. The iPhone for example can use both GPS and GLONASS. Any vendor that has designs on selling their nav products in multiple markets is going to want to use common hardware that can shift seamlessly between them whenever possible. This makes it cheaper to manufacture the device because they don't have to make and maintain multiple different bits of hardware. They can just use software to access the system(s) they are interested in for their use case. Such hardware already exists and chances are good you have some in your hand or pocket right now.

        And by most people I mean almost anybody. Those who need to have the cm precision will already be buying stuff that is able to do so.

        It's not just about accuracy though using more systems can and does improve location accuracy. It's also about redundancy and resiliency. This outage is an excellent example of why that sometimes matters.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        What issue? Phone makers use off-the-shelf GNSS chipsets and most current ones support not only GPS and Glonass, but also Galileo, BeiDou, and QZSS. Try the app that was mentioned in the other post and see what constellations your phone can see. My older phone can certainly see Glonass and GPS, and the phone I had last year could definitely see Galileo. From what I can tell all the current flagship phones can see Galileo (and others) and many of the cheap ones can too. So there's no issue. People jus

    • Is there any technical reason we can't have receivers that use all the different systems together to get more precise locations?

      We already do exactly this and have for many years. Not just satellite systems either. We also use terrestrial based nav systems in many cases to improve accuracy. Also helps with power consumption, device size, cost, etc. Relying on multiple independent systems is in general a very good idea just in case one of the systems has an unexpected problem with service... ahem...

    • Technical reasons? Not really. It's a legal issue. From what I recall (and I may be wrong), consumer devices in the US are only legally permitted to receive satellite signals from FCC-approved satellites, so, unsurprisingly, they're not allowed to receive signals from Galileo and GLONASS because those systems—given their foreign origins—were never submitted for FCC approval. In some cases, those same devices will switch to using Galileo or GLONASS once GPS reports that they are no longer within

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by anegg ( 1390659 )

        From what I recall (and I may be wrong), consumer devices in the US are only legally permitted to receive satellite signals from FCC-approved satellites

        When I first saw your post, I didn't believe that the US FCC would regulate a radio receiver in that fashion, because it doesn't fit my understanding of the general approach to radio regulation in the US (It is my understanding that radio receivers generally only need comply with FCC controls on spurious emissions, and do not need to be "licensed devices" as transmitters must. However, digging a bit deeper, I found this article on Galileo reception that appears to address the point you made https://galileo [galileognss.eu]

        • The article goes on to point out that many people have GLONASS receivers that work in the United States, so manufacturers might have been ignorant of (or ignored) the need for a license request before manufacturing/selling such a GLONASS receiver.

          The law does not say what you think it does. If you look at the definitions in 47CFR25.103, you'll find "earth station" does not mean "any receiver", it means:

          Earth station. A station located either on the Earth's surface or within the major portion of the Earth's atmosphere intended for communication: (1) With one or more space stations; or (2) With one or more stations of the same kind by means of one or more reflecting satellites or other objects in space.

          No, the GNSS receiver in my phone is not int

          • You're assuming that "communication" is bidirectional. Is it in those regulations? It may be. I don't know. As I said in my previous post, I had read (presumably in Slashdot comments) that Galileo was off-limits to all or most US-located devices. Based on other responses I received to my above comment, it sounds like that limitation may no longer be in place, so all of this may be moot anyway, regardless of whether or not I was right to begin with (which I readily acknowledge may not be the case).

            • You're assuming that "communication" is bidirectional. Is it in those regulations?

              Yes. "Communications with" means both ways. "Communications from" is one way. The license required is because of the transmitter, not the receiver.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Various technical reasons - first of all is the chip and antenna design. The signaling methods and frequencies of the antenna's have to be modified/added for any system you add. It's not a major technical problem, but it involves consuming a lot more power trying to get a lock on 4-8 satellites vs 8-16 satellites.

      The second problem is that now you have 2 or 3 locations for your system. You can somewhat calculate the error between systems but who will you trust more once you get a full lock on all systems an

      • I personally think a simple attack like ransomware brought down the satellite system.

        I was JUST thinking the same thing when I saw this article - considering the handful of recent public ransomware attacks we've seen (PLUS one of my local radio stations!!) it would entirely make sense that this was the cause.

        Although in this case I'd imagine they'd keep the problem and the payoff firmly hushed up, as it would be an even bigger embarrassment.

        On the other hand,, the only thing that's going to actually ligjht

    • but we haven't seen any improvement on location

      We have. You just weren't paying attention.

  • Boris Johnson. It's part of his plan to push through Brexit.

  • Ground infrastructure? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Once the satellites are up there, what exactly do we need to do from the ground to make them function?

    • Re: Ground infrastructure? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The orbits and clocks need to be precisely monitored from places with a known position. This data (emphemeris) is broadcast by the way and used by the receiver to calculate the position. In theory you could distribute the ephemerides in another way and have a somewhat autonomous constellation.

      • But couldn't you get a degraded reading with something like orbital dead reckoning? Is there a hard requirement the ground stations are always up? Cause that doesn't fit with the way GPS has been described as military ready tech.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Unlike the US GPS system which contain 2 atomic clocks in space per satellite, the Europeans launched cheaper maser clocks in space and have 2 base stations with Cesium clocks to synchronize against.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sorry thats not entirely correct: Each Galileo satellite contains 2 passive Hydrogen Maser clocks and 2 Rubidium oscillators; newer NAVSTAR GPS satellites carry 2 Caesium oscillators and 1 Rubidium oscillator. The accuracy of the Maser instruments used is approximately 5-10 times higher than Rubidium or Caesium based ones. In space you trade weight and volume for accuracy.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The Galileo maser clock stability outperforms the GPS cesium clocks by almost an order of magnitude, over time periods of more than 100 seconds, and have equivalent performance at shorter time periods.

  • Phones (and of course other navigation devices currently reliant on GPS) need INS to keep them from being useless during satellite outages. Navigation satellites are military targets and disabling GPS over enemy regions would have severe economic and safety effects.

    Military nav systems have INS for that reason. Phone makers live by data mining hence no interest in INS.

    An INS dongle could be a very useful product. Any Slashdotters know of one?

    • Inertial navigation suffers from drift the longer you go without an absolute position fix. For something like a plane flying for a few hours, this generally isn't a problem. For someone hiking in the mountains and relying on their phone using its vastly inferior accelerometers, the drift (uncertainty) would probably be on the order of miles after a day or two. Just grab any app which lets you see the raw sensor data. Run it and place your phone on the table (or on the ground). The accelerometers won't

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      All modern phones are INS capable.

      The problem is that INS on those small scales are usually MEMS, which are aren't known for their accuracy.

      Maybe you could squeeze a FOG into a dongle. In the lab I work we had some some research projects concerning possible improvements in their accuracy (accounting for stuff like how temperature affects the fibre optics, vibration and so forth). From thee I know that their accuracy is better than MEMS. But it's not a lot better unless someone else made some advances r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      Phones (and of course other navigation devices currently reliant on GPS) need INS to keep them from being useless during satellite outages. Navigation satellites are military targets and disabling GPS over enemy regions would have severe economic and safety effects.

      Military nav systems have INS for that reason. Phone makers live by data mining hence no interest in INS.

      An INS dongle could be a very useful product. Any Slashdotters know of one?

      There isn't one simply because a sufficiently accurate INS in such a small form factor is not possible yet. The offset and drift of micromechanical sensors is just too large. Drones use them for control and stability over short timescales but rely on GPS or direction finding and gravity for navigation.

  • Galileo (the eurpoean system) is in a testing phase, so autages are not surprising.

    GLONASS is operational, so is a fallback option.

    Regional systems include China's BeiDou, India's NAVIC and Japan's QZSS. BeiDu will become global around 2020 (probably a tad latter).

    So far GPS only chips and antenae are cheaper, but slowly, the other ones are getting lower prices, and SoCs and antenae supporting more than one constellation are becoming common.

    So, in the future, all maner of equipment will use more than one, e

    • The future started about 5 years ago or so. Most smartphones already support many GNSS systems.

      • For high end phones like we use in the west, yes.

        For cheaper phones like those used in poor countries in SE asia, Latam and africa, not yet.

        then we have the issue of computing in general, Banking systems, telecoms, and others which use the SatNavs as a Time reference (which, by the way, I clearly mentioned in my post), and you get the idea that things will not move too swiftly.

        You use satnav systems directly from your phone, but also indirectly when, for example, your bank or steam send you a 2FA code with

        • Even the phone that I purchased $60 included support for GPS, BeiDou, Galileo, and GLONASS. Nothing to do with high end.

          But I guess non-smart phones do not always have satellite positioning at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      So, in the future, all maner of equipment will use more than one, either for added precision (by using the 4 readings at the same time and using computation for a better position), ...

      Or by combining the ranges to satellites in multiple systems instead of combining separate navigation solutions.

  • TFA says it's down due to a problem with its "ground infrastructure". So, it's dependent on ground infrastructure to function? What's it doing? Tracking? (I haven't looked into how Galileo or GLONASS or the Chinese version work. GPS receivers are just receivers, no other ground infrastructure needed, though, of course, the military could turn selective availability back on. Assuming that capability hasn't been removed in the nearly two decades since it was last on.)

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      TFA says it's down due to a problem with its "ground infrastructure". So, it's dependent on ground infrastructure to function? What's it doing? Tracking? (I haven't looked into how Galileo or GLONASS or the Chinese version work. GPS receivers are just receivers, no other ground infrastructure needed, though, of course, the military could turn selective availability back on. Assuming that capability hasn't been removed in the nearly two decades since it was last on.)

      In all of these systems, ground infrastructure is required to measure each satellite's ephemeris and update the navigation system with this information. Left to itself, navigational accuracy would degrade over a period of days to weeks until the system failed.

  • So with Galileo support built into many devices these days, and with the GSA stating:

    "UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE, USERS EXPERIENCE A SERVICE OUTAGE. THE SIGNALS ARE NOT TO BE USED."

    Is your current satellite navigation system's accuracy being compromised by Galileo's failure? Should we be specifically configuring device to exclude Galileo until they can get their act together?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Nothing needs to be done. Your phone or satnav will go on using GPS and Glonass. The GNSS chipset will either not see the Galileo signals at all, or simply not use them in the fix if they are transmitting but so far out of sync with everything else.

  • NY power goes out PRECISELY on the anniversary of the big 1977 outage. Con Ed can't really explain why.

    Galileo goes out...blamed on some hand-wavy ground hardware (really? I thought a GPS system was mostly ground-independent, isn't that the point?).

    Coincidence? Or someone stretching their hacking muscles?

    Let's be clear, I'm not a tinfoil hat guy but I doubt that in either of those cases if it was hacking, that would be announced publicly.

  • Sigh. (Score:2)

    by ledow ( 319597 )

    Galileo isn't even SUPPOSED to be live yet. Nobody is using it for anything at all.

    The headline is bunk. It's more like "Europe continues to use GPS, Glonass etc. as it's prototype GPS system experiences its first serious problem nearly a full year before its due to be ready".

    But, hey, let's be anti-European for the sake of it, eh?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by qcope ( 116433 )

      Incorrect. Galileo went live.... at the end of December 2016 !

      https://galileognss.eu/2016/12/

      This live "initial services" was said to be not available all the time.... as 4 satellites didn't provide enough coverage. That was then..... The system now has considerably more than 4. The current failure is not being described as because of lack of satellites. Justification for Galileo was for many reasons, including reliability. Back in 2014 there was much criticism, from the EU, of a complete failure of GLONASS

  • Actually, what happened is... (Score:3)

    by LordHighExecutioner ( 4245243 ) on Monday July 15, 2019 @02:57PM (#58930116)
    Galileo satellites are tethered to ground, and they just ran out of wire.
  • Ada.

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